[OSGeo Oceania] Board - sharing budget doc

[adam steer]

Hi John, all

I agree with John’s point 1 - when we’re given commercial information from
others, we should ask before publishing.

The rest? While open-source-ness is not incompatible with IP, I don’t think
an organisational budget qualifies as protectable IP. It’ll be in a public
annual report anyway, right?

Like John, I’d need specific examples for points 3-5. I don’t see why we’d
lose a bargaining position - we can either pay for a thing, or not. If the
latter we can seek a different service provider or not do a thing. We don’t
have to do all the things for all the people all the time...

On obtaining funding, plenty of extremely cashed-up organisations continue
to obtain funding from various sources. If we need more money to do a
thing, I’m sure we can provide a strong enough case to win the funding we
need.

I think as much budgetary open-ness as possible is a good thing, and the
document shared by John is fine.

Regards,

Adam


On Wed, 21 Aug 2019 at 16:47, John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm seeing a lot of support for publishing the budget, based on the
> benefit to the community and potential future organisers of this and other
> events. But also a few arguments against, which we need to consider, I'll
> try to summarise here.
>
>    1. We shouldn't put others' intellectual property and commercially
>    sensitive material into the public domain
>    2. The budget is our own IP, which we should retain
>    3. We may give too much info to caterers and other suppliers, and lose
>    our bargaining position with regard to pricing
>    4. We may give too much info to PCOs, and lose our bargaining position
>    with regard to pricing
>    5. We may put ourselves at a disadvantage when it comes to seeking
>    funding, by sharing too much
>
> Re: point 1, I strongly agree and the proposed public document has been
> redacted to take this into account. If there's still anything specific in
> there that needs a change, let's do it.
>
> Re: point 2, I generally disagree, I don't see it as compatible with our
> position as an org responsible to an open community. I don't see a value
> proposition in classifying this specific information as protected. But
> would be interested to hear others' views on this.
>
> Re: point 3, For the most part, our service providers (caterers, A/V,
> equipment rental, etc) are competing in a local market against other
> similar providers, and would be unlikely to be able to use this information
> to their benefit. They often have set pricing schedules, and probably don't
> have time or inclination to find our public budget document and play us
> accordingly. By getting quotes from several providers in each case, we can
> make sure we're getting competitive pricing.
>
> Re: point 4, I don't have much experience with PCOs, I'm having trouble
> understanding how the information in this budget doc would disadvantage us
> in that relationship. Why would knowing how much we spent on catering in
> 2018 impact on this?
>
> Re: point 5, again, I am having trouble seeing this. Is there an example
> situation where the specific information in this budget would put us at a
> competitive disadvantage in a funding proposal?
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-- 
Dr. Adam Steer
http://spatialised.net
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adam_Steer
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http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0046-7236
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