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

[María Arias de Reyna]

Hi,

I have been reading this conversation silently and for my point of view, if
paying helps OsGeo, then subsctription fees are welcome.

But there is a big but: for students and people who are unemployed,
subsctription fees can be very discouraging. It happened to me with IEEE
and I still haven't returned to them after so many years. Once I couldn't
pay the membership, it was like forcing me to go away. I know that OsGeo is
more open and that even people who is not a member can participate actively
on mailing lists and projects but... it helps if you feel that you are part
of the community.

So, couldn't we add some kind of volunteer work to compensate the fee on
some cases? For example: people that work on maintenance of the servers, or
translate very hard or help on conferences, can they get a discounted or
even free subscription?

This way, all OsGeo members will contribute to OsGeo (with fees or work)
and people who are very active but cannot pay the fees will have also
recognition.

Just a random thought.


On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 2:17 PM, Mateusz Łoskot <mateusz at loskot.net> wrote:

> On 24 June 2014 14:02, Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas <jsanz at osgeo.org> wrote:
> > El 24/06/14 13:26, Mateusz Łoskot escribió:
> >>>
> >> Shortly, I see nothing wrong in expecting as an organisation
> >> that if an individual aims and agrees to be nominated for
> >> OSGeo Charter Member she/he also agrees to donate on yearly/monthly
> basis.
> >>
> >
> > Yes but I see that as different things, one is being nominated and
> > elected as member, and other being an active sponsor of the
> > organization.
> >
> > They are complementary, some people want to be involved on
> > the organization donating time, others maybe just want to donate funds,
> > and finally some crazy people both :-)
>
> So, you prefer that Charter Members and non-Charter Members
> is not differentiated (among other things) by paid membership.
>
> > But when it comes on deciding who is on the board or any other important
> > issue, I prefer having a membership that has been in one way or the
> > other elected by the community, not one that has paid their annual fee.
>
> AFAIU, nobody proposed to replace Charter Members election
> with membership fees, but to complement the former with the latter.
>
> >>> Ha! Not exactly that, but maybe doing better outreach effort to show
> >>> where the money is used would help to a better understanding of the
> need
> >>> of funds.
> >>>
> >>> Budgets are published and anyone willing to ask can reach them, but
> >>> maybe being more proactive on showing the need for money could help to
> >>> increase the perception that maintaining OSGeo is not free (as free
> beer).
> >>
> >> Yes, but that is more a technical issue. So, it's the easiest one to
> >> solve, I think.
> >
> > It's not important now but anyway I didn't explain well myself. I see it
> > as an organizational and marketing issue. As our treasurer, the task of
> > publicly remembering where the money comes and goes is probably one of
> > most ungrateful jobs anyone can have here, only for a tireless special
> one.
>
> The books show where the money comes from and where it goes,
> so still technical issue, but yes it requires hard work to maintain.
> However, the marketing side...is a different issue that is much harder to
> work on than the former one, I think.
>
> Best regards,
> --
> Mateusz  Łoskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
> _______________________________________________
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> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
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