[OSGeo-Discuss] End the vote!

[Frank Warmerdam]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 4:17 PM, Cameron Shorter
<cameron.shorter at gmail.com>wrote:

>  Hi Adrian and Jeff,
> Your points are very similar to those raised in April -> June 2012 [1]
> when discussing the concept of "OSGeo Advocate" (previously referred to as
> "OSGeo Ambassador").
>
> [1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2012-May/thread.html
>
> There is a tension between people wishing an exclusive "label" or "badge"
> which easily identifies a level of expertise and community recognition,
> verses a desire to be inclusive of everyone who applies.
>

Adrian / Cameron,

I just wanted to stress that there is also a "responsible governance" role
for charter members.  They exist in order to be a representative body
representing our community.  They are responsible for selecting the
board and more broadly to ensure that the organization isn't intentionally
or accidentally subverted by some other interest group.

Somewhat hypothetically imagine if all the students (of all types) at
a university got nominated.  Or if we had some money in the bank, and
advocates of some charity had the clever idea of nominating 1000
members so they could redirect our funds into their mission.

So some degree of limitations on charter membership election aren't
just about maintaining some exclusivity for status purposes.  They are
to avoid the organization being derailed from it's mission to easily.

I am personally in favor of allowing a fairly large number of charter
members, but also of de-emphasizing the distinction between
charter members and all the rest of our membership and community.
Charter member is a *mechanism* to keep the organization
reasonably representative but not otherwise (imho) supposed to
be important.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Software Developer
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