[OSGeo-Standards] for review/input/feedback: OSGeo / OGC MOU

[Bruce Bannerman]

Hi Tom,

Well done for progressing this. The overall intent is good.

Some comments:

1. The MOU

Associate Membership. This is a welcome change and will open up participation in OGC teams. Recalling Cameron Shorters comments, it will negate the need for OSGeo to find an agreed position on Voting issues if the membership was increased to Technical. Given our loose community this is probably a good thing. It will not negate the need for OSGeo to develop processes to ensure that OSGeo Members who take up these OGC membership slots act in good faith as representatives of OSGeo.

"OGC will waive the Trademark License fee associated with Compliance certification”. This statement is constrained to only those open source applications that are selected as Reference Implementations with some additional constraints.
While this mechanism is welcome, it is quite restrictive.
Perhaps a better way to handle this is to waive Trademark License fees on Compliance Certification for ***any*** open source product that passes compliance test procedures. This approach will have many flow on benefits, including:
Encourage open source projects to pursue compliance certification. As it stands most projects have limited resources and it is very unlikely that these scarce resources will be spent on a certification process.
Provide more products that are compliant with OGC Standards
Make it easier for proprietary software products that embed open source products to get certification
Make available a range of source code that passes certification to proprietary software vendors to guide their proprietary certification efforts
improve the ease of adoption of open spatial standards by end users

The MOU places obligations on both OGC and OSGeo. What thought has been given to mechanisms to ensure that these obligations are met?


2. Community engagement

There has not been a lot of community engagement in this issue.
The OGC is currently going through a renaissance in the modernisation of open spatial standards.
To begin to bring the OSGeo Community along for the journey, I think that we need a way of getting people up to speed with what is happening in the Open Spatial Standards space.

@Scott,

Can I suggest that you point OSGeo Members to some primer material to start this process? I expect that much of this already exists. Some suggestions:

Why are open spatial standards important? 

Why should I provide open spatial standards capability in my (open source) product?

What is the easiest way to learn about the open spatial standards approaches to doing things?

What is the new open spatial standards direction?

How do a go about my learning process?

How are standards developed? How han I best participate and collaborate?


Kind regards,

Bruce


> On 10 Aug 2021, at 00:55, Tom Kralidis <tomkralidis at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone: hope you are all doing well.  Per subject and [1][2], we have been working
> with OGC to renew our Memorandum of Understanding, and now have a draft (Exhibit A) of
> the MOU for your review and comment.
> 
> Please see [3] for your review, comment and input.  Anyone with the link should be able to
> comment in the document.
> 
> This is an important time for the updated MOU.  Open Source and Open Standards are
> natural, healthy and evolving, and this MOU will grow the collaboration between our
> organizations especially given OGC's increasing focus on developers.  Note that the MOU
> provides OSGeo an Associate Membership as well as the opportunity for input into the next
> generation of compliance testing (CITE).
> 
> Input and feedback is requested by Friday, 03 September 2021 at 12h UTC.
> 
> If there are no major issues, we will put the MOU for approval at the F2F Board meeting following
> FOSS4G 2021.
> 
> If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> On behalf of those involved in updating the MOU (OGC, OSGeo MOU Review Team).
> 
> ..Tom
> 
> [1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MoU_OGC/Review_2020 <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MoU_OGC/Review_2020>
> [2] https://git.osgeo.org/gitea/osgeo/todo/issues/80 <https://git.osgeo.org/gitea/osgeo/todo/issues/80>
> [3] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LNbDCkmjqfOtrUjOLkYNNhKhtPzXI_uCAC4R-l8drbY <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LNbDCkmjqfOtrUjOLkYNNhKhtPzXI_uCAC4R-l8drbY>_______________________________________________
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