[OSGeo-Standards] Does OSGeo really "understand" OGC?

[Tom Kralidis]

Correct, although we do not have a TC vote we do have SWG voting rights.

..Tom

On Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 3:00 PM Carl Reed via Standards <
standards at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Howard -
>
> I am not sure that your statement: "The most important one is OSGeo SWG
> members do not have voting rights."is correct. I checked the latest MoU.
> There is no mention of a voting rights restriction. My understanding is
> that any OGC member representative in good standing regardless of
> membership level can vote in SWG activities. The caveat is that the member
> representative abides by the TC Policies and Procedures related to SWG
> voting. For example, the representative needs to be a member of the SWG for
> 30 days before requesting becoming a voting member of the SWG. See clauses
> 7.7.2 and later in the TC PnP:
> https://docs.ogc.org/pol/05-020r24/05-020r24.html#66
>
> But I will let OGC Staff clarify :-)
>
> Cheers
>
> Carl
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 10:54 AM Howard Butler via Standards <
> standards at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> > On Jan 16, 2025, at 4:15 AM, Joana Simoes via Standards <
>> standards at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > Maybe we could introduce a session to discuss this at the next member
>> meeting? What do you think?
>>
>> Joana,
>>
>> The model of how OSGeo members participate in OGC is broken in a few
>> significant ways. The most important one is OSGeo SWG members do not have
>> voting rights, and the next one is OSGeo does not have a TC vote.
>>
>> What this means from a practical standpoint is OSGeo-sponsored
>> participants in SWGs can be ignored when there is disagreement. OGC voting
>> is the same as the principle of nuclear deterrence. The threat that one
>> *could* vote against you is incentive to work together to find common
>> ground. When there's no threat from a non-voting participant, there's
>> little incentive to actually work together when there is significant
>> disagreement. While there are hardly any -1's in typical OSGeo project
>> steering committee votes, the threat of a veto keeps everyone participating
>> in good faith. OGC participation of OSGeo-sponsored SWG members does not
>> have this dynamic.
>>
>> OSGeo itself not having a TC vote means OSGeo-sponsored participants have
>> no higher authority to appeal to either. In the end, OSGeo-sponsored
>> participants can exist to provide momentum, ideas, and work for the
>> committees, but if there is any kind of impasse, deference is always made
>> in the direction of the voting-member commercial or government voices, not
>> open source contributors. It is not just OSGeo's OGC participation that has
>> this dynamic either – small commercial entities are effectively priced out
>> of voting too.
>>
>> You could retort that voting does not matter and OGC is kumbaya, except
>> for the fact that in recent years OGC has been taking technologies the open
>> source community has pioneered and pushing them through its standardization
>> processes. Many recent OGC initiatives have been to take our community's
>> work after-the-fact – COG, PROJJSON, GeoJSON, GeoParquet (not quite yet) –
>> and "standardize" them in ways the break our practical software
>> compatibility, confuse the branding and marketplace we have built without
>> OGC meddling to "improve" them, and functionally wrest control of their
>> futures away from our communities that made them in the first place. With
>> no pathway to voting, OSGeo-sponsored participants have little opportunity
>> to control the direction of the things they have made once they go inside
>> of OGC.
>>
>> I think the open source community should be much more assertive in how it
>> participates with OGC to protect its investments and implementation
>> communities from be assumed/subsumed by this process. The first thing is
>> specifications should be licensed in such a way that does not allow
>> modifications (cc by-nd, etc), and that licensing should only be changed to
>> allow specific standardization activities with the permission of all
>> contributors. Second, OSGeo should support international trademark
>> registration activities to protect the naming rights of these
>> specifications (just like GeoPDF™️ :) ) to control how they are derived and
>> marketed in the standardization bodies. Finally, OSGeo should financially
>> support participation of its members to do standardization work in support
>> of its communities – our community should be able to participate on equal
>> par in person.
>>
>> Howard
>>
>> PS, sorry for the long essay, but it is a frustrating topic with a
>> repeating pattern.
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Standards at lists.osgeo.org
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/standards
>>
>
>
> --
> Carl Reed, PhD
> Carl Reed and Associates
>
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