[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo/LocationTech relationship

Mon Nov 16 02:30:42 PST 2015

Andrea,

> Your email is incorrect and very misleading unfortunately.

Is to easy as a statement to reply Daniel's mail[1], but I don't agree
as I don't see your point. I think Daniel is right in his analysis, and
so is his mail.

OSGeo is all about individual members, and there are no legal entities
represented at the board. Sponsors are welcomed and can promote their
activities on events like FOSS4G, but are not part of the board, and
take no part in the decision making process.
One of the strong differentiating elements in the vision of OSGeo is the
financial focus:

"OSGeo has never been about generating revenue.  OSGeo is and will be
about being the Open Source geospatial community, sharing, learning, and
having fun.  OSGeo will continue to be lean, earning enough funding to
help its annual FOSS4G and other events, maintain OSGeo's
infrastructure, and other critical needs.  The OSGeo foundation will
continue to be volunteer driven." - (from Vision of OSGeo - as stated by
Jeff [2])

I think Jeff has expressed it very well: OSGeo is all about community.

LT is all (IMHO) about adopting open source for Geo in the software
industry.

As OSGeo is promoting open source, this is a good initiative, and is
supportered by OSGeo, but OSGeo and LT are 2 different organisations and
this should stay so.

The difference between a community driven organisation and LT: once
business is involved, we talk about differences, competition, being
smarter better, more efficient than others. So, to accomplish this, LT
does not accept all open source, only those with a certain license
model. (see [3]) And this is not bad, nor good, but certainly not OSGeo.
And it is fine that key persons of OSGeo are taking the initiative to
found LT or Geo4All or whatever new initiative promoting OSS. But that
does not make that new initiative OSGeo.

I am sure other industry initiatives will emerge with other perspectives
and views. And they will be good initiatives too, and OSGeo will support
them hopefully also, because OSGeo is not about industry or education or
business or users, OSGeo is IMHO the drive behind the whole Geo
ecosystem. OSGeo is the OSGeo community.

my 2c

Dirk

[1] https://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@lists.osgeo.org/msg13501.html
[2] https://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@lists.osgeo.org/msg13488.html
[3] https://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@lists.osgeo.org/msg13451.html

On 16-11-15 01:35, Andrea Ross wrote:
> On 15/11/15 23:20, Daniel Kastl wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA256
>>
>>
>>> People can and do participate in both OSGeo & LocationTech all the
>>> time.  This is a good thing. It absolutely isn't a zero sum
>>> scenario. The mutually reinforce each other rather than detract
>>> from one another.
>>>
>> I think there is a big difference in how the participation is organized:
>> With OSGeo you become a member like this: http://www.osgeo.org/Membershi
>> p
>> And with LT it works like this:
>> https://www.locationtech.org/content/become-member and details in
>> here: https://www.locationtech.org/charter
>>
>> You could now argue, that participation is not membership. That's right.
>> But then look at who you participate for in case of LT :
>> https://www.locationtech.org/members
>>
>> There is a big "Strategic" at the topic, so to me this means, that
>> they have a lot to say. And there is a guest sections, which it likely
>> the opposite.
>>
>> I don't need to explain, who paid their dollars to become a strategic
>> member. For them the annual fee is nothing in their overall budget.
>>
>> The funny thing is, that both (OSGeo and LT) have a "Nondiscrimination
>> Statement" on their website:
>>
>> OSGeo: "The Foundation is open to all members of the geospatial
>> community. We do not discriminate based on age, gender, race,
>> nationality, religion, sexual orientation, or disability."
>>
>> LT: "We are committed to making participation in the LocationTech
>> community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of
>> level of experience, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual
>> orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race,
>> ethnicity, age, religion or analogous grounds."
>>
>> I think you forgot "economic discrimination"!
>>
>> For me, whether I would be able to pay for a membership or not, it
>> makes it a very easy decision, where I want to contribute my volunteer
>> time for.
>>
>> Sorry, if this slightly moved the thread into a different direction. I
>> just wanted to agree with Andrea, that LT doesn't have the same goals
>> in some way: it clearly focuses on the economic strong members of the
>> organization.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Daniel
>>
>> PS: you will also recognize from the members, that LT is not a diverse
>> organization in terms nationalities. Well, you could argue, that IBM,
>> Oracle and Google are operating globally ;-)
>>
>>
> 
> Daniel,
> 
> Your email is incorrect and very misleading unfortunately. If you don't
> mind some important clarifications below, I hope they'll help.
> 
> You compared organizational membership at LocationTech with individual
> participation at OSGeo. A much better comparison would be to compare
> OSGeo sponsors with LocationTech membership. You'll see they are
> similar. LocationTech members receive formal representation on the board
> which I think is a significant difference worth noting.
> 
> For completeness, it's worth mentioning that LocationTech's membership
> model is based on a sliding scale of revenue & employee count. A vote is
> a vote whether it comes from a huge member or tiny one, or a committer.
> I believe this largely covers your concern of economic discrimination.
> Jody mentioned that OSGeo is considering a similar model, which I think
> is a great idea.
> 
> You are correct that guest members are observers. They participate, but
> have no formal voting rights. They can upgrade their membership at any
> time should they wish to.
> 
> From an individual participation perspective, be it as users,
> contributors, or committers they are quite similar. One significant
> difference is that project committers have dedicated formal
> representation on the LocationTech board.
> 
> It's also worth mentioning that as Strategic membership grows, so does
> committer representation to counter-balance. The whole point of the
> Foundation is to provide a structured governance model so that votes
> count equally and keep various influences in balance for the betterment
> of the ecosystem.
> 
> You likely also notice that it uses the funding provided by
> organizational members to support the projects, but in a way that does
> not interfere with their independence and self governance. I believe
> that to be quite desirable from a project's perspective. Rob has shared
> his feelings on the matter as well.
> 
> I hope this helps,
> 
> Andrea
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

-- 
Yours sincerely,

ir. Dirk Frigne
CEO @geosparc

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