[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo community Maxed out?

[Frank Warmerdam]

ian wrote:
> Allan Doyle wrote:
> Hi,
>> We are also supposed to do another round of bringing in Voting Members,
>> aren't we? I would hope that doing so would have the effect of bringing
>> in some new people with new energy.
> 
> So I am one of these new people and i was wondering about this Voting.
> Is this like the Ubuntu Community Council ? How much code do I need to
> submit to become a member?

Ian,

I don't know too much about the Ubuntu Community Council.

> I had a look on the site:
> Beyond selecting the initial charter membership of 45 members, details
> of the membership process have not been determined. However, all members
> of the open source geospatial community are encouraged to participate in
> foundation mailing lists, committees, and projects. Charter membership
> is not required for most forms of participation
> 
> which seems a bit unclear to be honest. On another note I am pretty keen
> to get the Augmented Reality Workgroup up and running so how can I do
> this. Bit of anewbie here to be honest

Our adopted membership rules are at:

  http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Membership_Rules

Essentially there are regular members and charter members.  Our intention is
to have many members, but charter members (once known as voting members)
are a limited group intended to ensure the foundation stays "on mission".

There are a few flaws in our current plan.  One is that we don't actually have
a proper way of signing up as a regular member.  We have a task to write a
Membership Application:

   http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Membership_Application

In the meantime we generally just ask interested people to sign up on the
web site, joining mailing lists for committees and projects of interest.
Contribute in the wiki.  Ask questions in the #osgeo channel on irc. etc.

The second flaw is this whole regular member vs. charter member difference
causes confusion, and perhaps bad feelings.  I guess we could say the third
flaw is that we haven't picked a time or process to select additional
charter members.  The original ideas was that the number of charter
members should not be that large - apparently so we can get a quorum of
voters when needed, and to ease administrative overhead.

As for establishing an Augmented Reality Workgroup, the process is normally:

  o Setup a wiki page describing who is interested, and the mission.
  o If you get a few people who are interested, ask someone to create a
    mailing list for your group (ie. site admins, or me)

At this point you are a self-organized working group!  Do as you wish, with
the understanding you aren't actually acting on behalf of OSGeo.  You are
just a self-organized working group living in the wiki and on the mailing
list.

If you think you need to be a full committee so that you have a clear mandate
from the board, and can speak for the foundation on some topics then you would
need to come to the board with a proposal.  I don't see any need for this for
the Augmented Reality working group for the time being.

I thought there was a wiki page describing how to organize a working group,
but I couldn't find it so perhaps I'm confused.  There was a discussion of
this some months ago with us agreeing that starting an not-very-official
working group should be easy and "lite" and that we would provide mailing
lists as soon as there are at least 3-4 people interested if we are requested.

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