"Geospatial Foundation" Meeting

[Paul Ramsey]

Dear Community Members,

In order to help move along the process of starting an "open source  
geospatial foundation" there will be a face-to-face meeting in  
Chicago, Westin O'Hare, on February 4, 2006, hosted by Autodesk. In  
conceiving of this meeting, we have tried (and will continue to try)  
to follow these principles:

- Inclusion. Members from a number of different open source projects  
have been invited (see the list so far below) and Autodesk has  
offered to pay the travel costs of some of these invitees in order to  
ensure they can attend if they cannot afford it otherwise. Anyone  
else is also welcome to attend physically or virtually (see below).

- Transparency. The agenda for the meeting will be public, and will  
be revised based on comments and input prior to the meeting. The  
minutes of the meeting will also be public. Planning materials  
(backgrounders, attendee lists, agenda) for the meeting on will be on  
a public site. The whole meeting will be transcribed into IRC in real  
time, and IRC users will be able to participate via an interlocutor  
at the meeting.

The following are some general goals for the meeting (subject to  
revision/addition/subtraction), which should provide enough certainty  
that present investments into the starting of the foundation are not  
wasted on concepts that people are not interested in for the long  
term future.

- Agreement in principle on a mission statement or short charter.

- Agreement in principle on a governance model for the foundation.  
Deciding whether the foundation should "look like" Eclipse, or  
Apache, or The Open Group, or some other model entirely.

- Agreement in principle on a founding Board of Directors. A founding  
BoD can start to make concrete decisions on things like a name, logo  
and branding, domains, and so on.

- Agreement in principle on an acceptable short list of foundation  
names, to be subjected to further legal research.

In general, the goal is to establish enough solid agreement on basic  
issues that a founding BoD can proceed confidently in managing the  
details in getting the foundation up and running.

The proposed agenda follows:

a.      Opening statements and introductions
b.      Q/A – ~20 min - from IRC, email
c.      Foundation Goals – what should they be? What should the name be?
d.      Q/A – ~20 min - from IRC, email
e.      Foundation Operations – the givens (governance, legal  
protection, IPR, licenses, funding, community management)
f.       Q/A – ~20 min - from IRC, email
g.      Foundation charter, tentative board membership, and action  
plan established
h.      Q/A – 20 min - from IRC, email
i.       Breakout groups: Governance, Legal Issues, Community  
Management, Funding
j.       Breakout groups regroup and present their findings
k.      Results will be gathered and enumerated for the creation of a  
draft document rolling up the decisions and next steps.

The minutes of this meeting will be published on the web site within  
a few days after the meeting adjourns. We will then work hard to  
publish the final results of the meeting within two weeks of the  
meeting.

An attorney who has worked with the creators of Mozilla and other  
foundations to establish non profits for housing an open source  
foundation will be present. Establishing an open source foundation is  
now almost formulaic in Silicon Valley, and we would like to take  
advantage of those formulas.

The participants in the meeting thus far are:

Brian Behlendorf (O'Reilly & CollabNet)
Chris Holmes (GeoServer/Open Planning Project)
Claude Philipona (FOSS4GIS Conference/Camptocamp)
Dave McIlhagga (Mapserver/DM)
Frank Warmerdam (OGR/GDAL)
Gary Lang (Tux/Autodesk)
Gary Sherman (QGIS)
Gordon Luckett (User/Autodesk)
Howard Butler (MapServer/UIowa)
Mark Lucas (OSSIM)
Paul Ramsey (PostGIS/uDig/Refractions)
Pericles Nacionales (Mapserver/UMN)
Robert Bray (Tux/Autodesk)
Rich Steele (Tux/Autodesk)
Paul Spencer (Ka-Map/DM)
Steve Lime (Mapserver)
Tom Burk (Mapserver/UMN)
Tyler Mitchell (O’Reilly Author, long-time MapServer Foundation  
advocate)

We therefore have room for more on-site attendees. If you are  
interested in attending to represent one of these communities as a  
user or you want to propose adding a project to this list, please  
send an email to:

   chicago <at> mapserverfoundation.org

When we reach 25 on-site attendees, we will be at our budget limit  
for this meeting and have reached a size that we feel comfortable  
managing. Everyone else can participate through the virtual  
mechanisms described above.

Everyone wants to ensure the foundation has a long and successful  
future, and we know that this requires getting lots of input up  
front, so the organization starts out heading in the right direction.  
We hope that many of you can join us in Chicago, and that the rest  
will join us virtually as well to take part in this process.

We will soon start posting Chicago location information (a hotel near  
the airport is the goal) and information for discussion publicly. We  
will use www.mapserverfoundation.org as the hosting place for virtual  
connection information, discussion documents, agenda modifications,  
and other documents associated with the foundation until such time as  
the name of the foundation is chosen and a site dedicated to it has  
been established.

Paul Ramsey
Gary Lang