[OSGeo-Discuss] The future of OSGeo - discussion paper

[Adam Steer]

Hi Jeroen, all

Thanks for writing up a proposal, it's not easy to make that step.

My primary issue with the document is around paid individual memberships. I
can see this leading to:
- committing the current, and every future, board to supporting a
membership infrastructure
- a culture step from 'we do things as a community' to 'OSGeo does things
for us because we paid'
- a setting of expectation around what being an OSGeo supported means

About committing money to OSGeo in general:

>From my perspective when I was able to sponsor OSGeo it wasn't because I
expected a marketing gain or return (there was exactly 0). It was because
it was necessary. I use OSGeo projects all the time, I see that OSGeo
provides dis-enshittified infrastructure, I want to and am able to support
that to the level of my means. It's more a "hey thanks keep going" than
anything.

Other people have different expectations, and that's fine - we're not a
uniform community. It's fine for a company to expect ROI, the task of
whoever is organising sponsorship is to find that message. It isn't easy
and my experience is that there is no boilerplate. Each prospective sponsor
needs a nuanced approach!

I think streamlining sponsorship is a great idea. A while ago I helped
sponsors of a regional event navigate their OSGeo sponsorship levels as
well. I can see how people doing a lot of event sponsorship get an admin
load that might be harder to track.

While I have a strong dislike of paid individual memberships, the rationale
for organisational memberships makes undeniable sense. I've experienced
that barrier as a sponsorship organiser.

However, organisational membership must come with caveats and strict ruling
around real *or perceived* conflict of interest and the perception of pay
for influence around board and committee members who are employed by the
organisational sponsors. This relationship must be declared in election
materials and nominations, and it must come with no additional influence on
voting.

Again, I say this with caution. We can't know how the board in N years time
will be burdened (or not), it'll take resilience and some strength (and a
lot of good faith) to ensure that organisations avoid seeing this as buying
influence.

I like the idea of local chapters returning some funds when possible,
funding levels need to be negotiated case by case. A slightly more formal
MoU held in OSGeo-operated infrastructure might make life easier, for
example it wasn't immediately straightforward to find where OSGeo Oceania's
foundational agreements were. And that is only from 6 years ago!

My view is also that conferences are better smaller. Having attended EGU
and some other larger events, it is much better value (IMO) to stay
smaller, more community oriented. In this way the regional, local, global
events can be like a network which is able to capture the larger audience
without everyone needing to be in the same place at the same time (a
logistics nightmare!). So I like the proposal of making a strong calendar
separation between (generally) a timeframe for local /regional events and
(generally) a time frame to hold the global FOSS4G.

Broadly I see OSGeo as some kind of safety net. It doesn't need to fully
own or control what happens in various local chapters which might come and
go and evolve. It doesn't need to put brakes on or touch other OSGeo
project efforts (eg GDAL, QGIS). Maybe OSGeo can do less also? (But what
less? good question, which I don't have an answer to)

The core of the organisation (to me) is to provide support to FOSS4G
projects that need it, mentoring and support to a wider community. It does
that (IMO) by providing dis-enshittified infrastructure we can use, either
to do software or talk to each other and connect. Which costs money! And
needs people to support, who can't always be volunteers!

Conferences are like an icing on that cake. And also essential
fundraisers...

It is still a real shame that OSGeo isn't incredibly well funded by
governments and business and academia that absolutely relies on the work of
OSGeo. So it's great to try and address that, from all kinds of different
angles. And we roll with the consensus that the community has. As long as
there's been a good opportunity for everyone to speak.

Maybe my view is completely wrong, and that's OK. I can only see as far as
I can see and I'm not deep into business in Europe or the US or actually
anywhere!

I hope my points made some sense.

Thanks,

Adam
--
Dr Adam Steer
https://iamadamsteer.com
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