[OSGeo-Discuss] Membership fee (was: Proposed process for selecting OSGeo charter members)

[Mateusz Łoskot]

On 1 July 2014 18:46, Dirk Frigne <dirk.frigne at geosparc.com> wrote:
> [...]
> I may be naive, but for me personally this works out well, and having
> that feeling is one of the important incentives to keep contributing to
> the community. (And by the way, working with other members of the OSGeo
> community didn't result in any bad experience until now)
> [...]
> "Core principles are:
>
>     OSGeo should act as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation.
>     OSGeo should focus support on OSGeo communities and initiatives
> which support themselves. " [1]
> [...]
> Personally, I don't think it are the users nor the community members who
> should take care of that. Because the belonging to the community should
> remain a *free* right, where the value comes from respect and the
> intense feeling of giving something without expecting something back.
>
> The strange thing is that many of the members are also professional
> involved into OSGeo (acting as A T G or C).
> So I suggest it should not be the (community) members who should pay for
> the support, but these professional actors.
> [...]
> The sponsoring should not be an obligation either, but should be the
> common responsibility of the companies sponsoring the FOSS4G events today.

Dirk,

You've captured the essence well and it fits my personal point of view
at OSGeo too.
You've also given some good ideas to work on, on how to move about the mixture
of expectations within the community.

We may need to be careful to not to divide the community to classes of members,
professionals and non-professionals. It may turn into a very similar
issue as paying
and non-paying members.

Thanks for your writing.

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz  Łoskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net