[Foss4g2008loc] Feedback from GISSA National Council meeting on 4Oct

[Frank Warmerdam]

Jeff McKenna wrote:
> Question: how do we accept abstracts for presentations and/or
> workshops for our "FOSS4G" conference that do not contain any
> reference to FOSS?  Maybe I am misreading your "blending proprietary
> and FOSS talks" idea.  I personally think that PaulR and the 2007
> committee successfully showed the community how proprietary and FOSS
> can work together in the geospatial world.  And if education is the
> key for the 2008 conference, surely accepting non-FOSS presentations
> and workshops will not help in educating the SA area in FOSS.  Please
> clarify.

Jeff,

I think we need to accept that "FOSS4G 2008 with GISSA 2008" will include
proprietary content, and that unlike previous years it will not be
exclusively oriented to FOSS.  In future RFPs I think we need to consider
whether we like this model, and ensure that we understand how much
message/content control we (as OSGeo) will have over the conference.

But the proposal did (I think) make it clear this would also be the GISSA
2008 conference, so we need to let GISSA do their part of it their way.

In Victoria we did discuss a need to identify talks that are strictly
proprietary though this still leaves me confused since many talks will
fall into a middle ground where they involved proprietary and FOSS or
even where the software packages and their licensing are not germaine.

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    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org