Dear Tom,
I understand the way you are feeling and I know that are reasons for
that. I remember that I had some hard time when I did wrote that part of
my email. However, this was reported my many persons and I had to
include this in my message. Anyway, I don't think that a single old
OSGeo charter member will consider the new comers as lite members. The
quality of the new members is proven by the important number of
seconding messages and by the fact that no veto was raised. In the early
years of OSGeo, the membership process was a very selective one and this
was also a subject of criticism. I can understand why moving from one
extreme to another can cause such reactions. Personally I'm very in
favor of an inclusive system but one with an voting mechanism. This is
something for the community and the board to decide. The actual system
is also a big burden to the CRO (hundreds of emails and wiki edits) and
also a stress for our mailing list.
I can only speculate why they did not used our mailing list to express
their opinion. Most of them are old OSGeo members and I think they did
not want to sound like they are contesting the membership process
(already started) or that they contest the already nominated persons.
Not a single one contested the persons that were nominated and I'm 100%
sure that was a genuine care not to dilute the importance of our
membership position. Also, most of the messages were not sent to CRO
email but over IRC/Google Hangouts and some during face to face
meetings, just before the elections, at FOSS4G in Boston.
I will conclude by reiterating again that all the critics were on the
membership process and not a single one about the new members. Of
course, those critics should not be expressed now, just before, during
or after the nomination process, but immediately after the board decided
to change the membership process. The board decided to make the change
during the face to face meeting in Bonn in 2016 [1]. At that time, the
board did a poor job in communicating this change to the community.
Actually only those members that are manually checking the meetings wiki
pages or the OSGeo Loomio instance were aware of the change. I was also
a board member at that time and I would like to apologize for not
communicating better.
Best,
Vasile
[1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2016-8-04
On 10/30/17 2:27 PM, Tom Chadwin wrote:
Dear Vasile and all
I've thought long and hard about whether to reply or not, but it has been
bothering me, so I guess I must.
However, during the nomination
period, many of our members considered the new membership process way
too inclusive/lite, causing a diminution in the importance of the
charter member position.
As one of the intake of this year's new charter members, I find this both
insulting and upsetting.
My recommendations for the future board are to: (a) Change the
existing membership process with another one more balanced, that assures
both inclusiveness and a consistent weight for the charter member
position.
Where does that leave those of us elected as charter members this year? Are we "lite"
members because "many" existing members felt strongly enough about protecting the
exclusivity of their position to complain privately to the CRO, but not strongly enough to express
that opinion openly so that it could be discussed?
I really feel for Vasile that people expressed such a potentially toxic
opinion, thereby absolving themselves of the responsibility of putting their
names to it, while presumably expecting him to raise it himself, as he has so
professionally done.
I was extremely proud to have been nominated and generously seconded.
Recognition and reputation are significant parts of open-source currency.
However, this attitude creates the impression that membership is a self-serving
clique.
I would have been happy to have gone through a more rigorous nomination
process. However I, and many of my colleagues - many much, much more respected
than me - did not, through no fault of our own.
Let me make this clear: this issue and the way in which it has been raised,
coupled with the white western board election results (concern about which I
absolutely share), and also the unpleasant flavour of the board election
through the situation with Jeff are making me question whether I should retain
the charter membership I was so proud to attain.
Yours in frustration
Tom
Tom Chadwin, ICT Manager
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Vasile Crăciunescu
geo-spatial.org: An elegant place for sharing geoKnowledge & geoData
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