Hi Nick, (A few lines of introduction for talk-de readers who haven't followed the issue:)
Ein bisschen Hintergrund fuer die Leser von talk-de: Die OSMF will gerne lokale "Vertretungen" haben. Der Plan ist, dass der FOSSGIS e.V. diese Rolle in Deutschland spielt. Hierzu ist eine Vereinbarung zwischen dem FOSSGIS e.V. und der OSMF notwendig. Jochen und ich haben zu einem vorlaeufigen Entwurf dieser Vereinbarung im Januar Stellung genommen. Grundsaetzlich wuerde so eine Zusammenarbeit so aussehen, dass jeder, der Mitglied im FOSSGIS wird, automatisch auch Mitglied der OSMF wird, ohne dafuer extra zahlen zu muessen, und FOSSGIS zahlt dann einen Beitrag an OSMF. Natuerlich wird nach wie vor niemand gezwungen, irgendwo Mitglied zu sein, es geht nur darum, diese Zweiteilung "werde ich nun Mitglied im deutschen FOSSGIS oder in der englischen OSMF" aufzuheben - man will sich ja keine Konkurrenz machen, sondern zusammenarbeiten. Nick Black wrote: > Thanks for the feedback on setting up local chapters. This is the first > negative feedback about this particular aspect I've heard Jochen and I have send you exactly that feedback when you asked us what we thought of the first draft of the local chapters guidelines in January this year. I am attaching a full copy of that e-mail to the end of this. (Jochen und ich haben genau diese Kritik an Nick geschickt, als wir im Januar einen vorlaeufigen Entwurf der Vereinbarung zwischen OSMF und "Local Chapters" bekamen. Eine Kopie der Mail von damals haengt an.) We had made it quite clear to you that the German community will happily enter into an agreement with OSMF and will also agree to return whatever it gained from that agreement if cooperation should stop at a later point in time, but that we would not hand over assets like the openstreetmap.de domain which we have independently of OSMF. (Wir haben klargestellt, dass die deutsche Community sicher eine Vereinbarung mit der OSMF eingehen wuerde und dass es auch kein Problem waere, alles, was die Community aufgrund dieser Vereinbarung erhaelt, nach einem eventuellen Ende der Vereinbarung zurueckzugeben, aber Dinge wie die openstreetmap.de-Domain, die wir unabhaengig von der OSMF besitzen, wuerden wir natuerlich nicht zurueckgeben.) > When setting up local chapters, the Foundation wanted to help local OSM > communities represent OSM officially. Until now, you only ever spoke of "representing OSMF", not "representing OSM". Quote from the draft: "... 1.1 The Foundation grants the Federated Organisation the non-exclusive right to represent the Foundation in the designated territory". (Bis jetzt hiess es immer "die OSMF vertreten", nicht "OSM vertreten"). > 1) Do you all generally agree that the OSM-Foundation needs to have a > termination clause in the contract? > > 2) If so, what can we do to make it more acceptable? As I said, simply make the wording so that any rights gained through the agreement have to be returned. (Wie gesagt, man aendere die Wortwahl dergestalt, dass nur das, was durch die Vereinbarung hinzugewonnen wurde, zurueckgegeben wird.) FOSSGIS e.V. already handles the bits where OSM Germany needs some "official" representation vis-a-vis authorities etc., and once we sort out the remaining details (I hope we'll be able to talk to you and some other local-chapters-to-be at SOTM) FOSSGIS e.V. can also become the OSMF local chapter for D/A/CH. (Der FOSSGIS e.V. handhabt bereits die Vertetung des OSM-Projekts gegenueber solchen Stellen, die eine "offizielle" Vertretung wollen, und sobald die verbleibenden Dinge geklaert sind - ich hoffe, wir koennen da auf der SOTM mal drueber reden - kann der FOSSGIS auch die lokale Organisation der OSMF fuer D/A/CH werden.) Bye Frederik ------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:15:02 +0100 From: Jochen Topf <[email protected]> To: Nick Black <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] OSM-Foundation Local Chapters Draft Agreement Hi Nick, Frederik and I looked over the local chapters draft and have some comments. They are no "official" statement of the German FOSSGIS organisation or anybody else, just some issues that we came up with when we discussed the draft. 1. Who is representing whom? We think a very fundamental issue hasn't gotten enough attention: What is the relationship between the general OSM community, the foundation and the local chapters. At the moment our understanding is that the Foundation and local organisations represent the community, each in its own way. The agreement changes this to: The Foundation is the only one representing the community and the local chapters represent the Foundation. This is especially important for the motivation of the local chapters. Why should they enter into this agreement, if they can represent the community without doing this? 2. What are the local chapters for? We are missing some more general discussion of what the local chapters are for. What are they expected to do? Which jobs remain with the Foundation? We are looking for informal guidelines, visions, "use cases". There is some in the preamble, but this needs to be fleshed out more. Before we can have a legal framework, there needs to be a common cause and a common understanding what the job of the Foundation and the local chapters is. We first need to know how things *should* work before we can evaluate a proposed legal document and see whether it is the best way to implement this idea. 3. Formal representation The draft gives the federated organisation the right to represent the Foundation. But legally the Foundation is represented by the board. What exactly is meant by this representation? Can the federated organisation enter into contracts in the name of the Foundation etc? 4. Non-exclusivity This is probably meant in a way that the Foundation can also speak for themselves in all the territories even if there is a local group there. But we should probably not allow more than one federated member for the same area or at least give existing federated members a veto right if another group wants to also represent this territory. Also, does the Foundation want to reserve the right to "overrule" a federated member in its area? 5. Membership Having all members of local organisations as members of the Foundation brings some difficulties with it. The German OSM community decided to join the existing FOSSGIS organization. Many members of FOSSGIS are not interested in OSM, they do other Open Source or Open Data stuff, but not OSM. This is especially important because of the payment of dues and because members also have obligations and not only rights. We could imaging there are similar situations in other countries. Also there are details like renewing memberships, different membership periods etc. that need to be defined properly. What about existing members? 6. Providing services Section 3.2 talks about "may be required...to provide...services" This is much too vague to be in a legal document. 7. Termination The rules for the termination are that the local group has to give up all right on domain names etc. At the moment these rights already belong to many local groups in the world. They did not get them from the foundation. So why give them "back" (or sign a document that says you will give them back in certain cases)? These are just some comments for discussion, not an exhaustive list. We send them to you as chairman of the working group so you can discuss things internally. Its probably not something that should be discussed to death on the public mailing list. Thanks for working on this issue! Jochen _______________________________________________ Talk-de mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-de
