[Fundraising] Re: [OSGeo-Board] Re: [Fundraising] Re: [OSGeo-Board] Re: [Fundraising] RE: [OSGeo-Board] German OSGeo Chapter formation, bank account

[Gary Lang]

Arnulf,

It is not part of a bias. It is an observation of what actually happened. They asked for help setting this up. Please pay attention to this fact - they did not want to do this themselves. 

If your theory on how to build OSGreo up is that we should have ignored their requests and just said 'Arnulf says you should just handle this locally', I find that puzzling.

I think reality is colliding with your theory here. Perhaps some counterexamples would be helpful instead of repeating that there's a bias without demonstrating that this is so.

The practical concerns w.r.t. the transaction costs you raise are worth considering.

Gary

--- Original Message ---
From: "Arnulf Christl (CCGIS)" <arnulf.christl at ccgis.de>
Sent: Mon 8/21/06 2:15 pm
To: "Gary Lang" <gary.lang at autodesk.com>
Cc: "board at board.osgeo.org" <board at board.osgeo.org>, "fundraising at fundraising.osgeo.org" <fundraising at fundraising.osgeo.org>, "discuss-de at visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org" <discuss-de at visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org>
Subject: [Fundraising] Re: [OSGeo-Board]  Re: [Fundraising]	 Re: [OSGeo-Board] Re:      [Fundraising]	 RE: [OSGeo-Board] German OSGeo Chapter formation,      bank account


On Mon, August 21, 2006 19:35, Gary Lang wrote:
> Having just personally hooked us up with China and personally worked on
> bringing up thr Japan chapter, I am not sure where this bias shows up.
>
> Gary

This way of thinking is part of the bias. Its not that you do something
there but that they can do things by themselves. This seems to be
incredibly hard to understand for many people.

I assume your personal hooking OSGeo up with China has a solid commercial
interest. Which is perfectly fine but different to the kind of bias I am
talking of. I think that the OSGeo that I see growing is just one level
more global than yours. We should share our visions or something like
that.

It is a different thing whether you dictate others what you think they
need (and say "we need") and what they and you and I really need.

This is funny. I did not bother a second to think about whether this
request could be any issue at all. I am slightly stunned at the immediate
responses. There are basically two reasons why I want to have a separate
banking account. The first is that we need to put community money that has
come out of the German conferences to good use. We (the FOSSGIS conference
team) have decided to put this money into OSGeo. The second reason is that
every time you shove money accross a border it loses value. The smaller
the amount the less it makes sense. So the easiest thing is to set up a
separate Euro account. If this is a big thing for OSGeo management and
results in a costly overhead we will do it differently. We can found a
small association with a bank account and then apply for an association
with OSGeo. Same thing other way round. Would that be better? Either way
up I end up on your doorstep sooner or later with some 5000 Euros sitting
on an account waiting to be spent for some OSGeo activity. Are we going to
make this difficult?

> --- Original Message ---
> From: "Arnulf Christl" <arnulf.christl at ccgis.de>
> Sent: Mon 8/21/06 1:24 pm
> To: "board at board.osgeo.org" <board at board.osgeo.org>
> Cc: "fundraising at fundraising.osgeo.org"
> <fundraising at fundraising.osgeo.org>,
> "discuss-de at visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org"
> <discuss-de at visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org>
> Subject: Re: [Fundraising]	 Re: [OSGeo-Board] Re: [Fundraising]	 RE:
> [OSGeo-Board] German OSGeo Chapter formation, bank account
>
> Gary Lang wrote:
>> I also wonder what the impetus is. It seems like another governance
>> issue, wherein local chapters could register their localized
>> dissatisfaction with global decisions by funneling funds while enjoying
>> the benefits that we provide.
>>
>> I can't think of a practical reason for doing this.
>
> The practical reason is that Autodesk does not have to ship one set of
> posters around the world in all languages but that all languages can
> take care of it themselves. We need local money to pay for local
> expenses. Else a lot simply ends up in superfluous transactions fees.
>
>  > enjoying the benefits that we provide.
>
> Who is "we"? Are you 
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