Our membership group replied to Nigel separately, but I thought I'd respond here on the list, since membership questions may be of interest to some of you.
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Tzeng, Nigel H. <nigel.tz...@jhuapl.edu> wrote: > > This is off-topic but I would be more inclined to join as an individual > member if there was more clarity into what concrete benefits the OSI will > provide (beyond advocacy) Part of this will depend on what the membership *want* us to do, but I see a future where we're doing education as well as advocacy, and investing in projects (like the one you suggested) that make core open source infrastructure stronger. > and what membership governance really means. > Do members get to vote for board members? We're working in that general direction, yes; details still TBD and will depend on the details of California non-profit law. (I was nominated by the Affiliates.) I personally think this is extremely important; because of OSI's role in the licensing space, the organization *must* be trustworthy, and I think that means (in large part) tying it to the community. But that also means it is something we have to take the time to get right. > I can easily give the OSI $40 a year but I don't care to pay for just > advocacy. Although I do wonder why membership costs $5 more to join the > OSI than the ACLU or NRA with actual DC lobbies and lawyers...the AARP is > a bargain at $16. We're trying to build organizational capacity, starting from a lot smaller base than the AARP :) That means, unfortunately, a fairly big ask. We will of course continue to look at this kind of thing and adjust to make the organization as broad-based as possible, while also giving us the revenue to work on projects and perhaps hire staff. Hope that is helpful- Luis _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss