Hi, Stefan de Konink wrote: > The goals of the OSMF are to facilitate the project. So it could/should > be a goal to look out for worldwide opportunities, not limited to > getting sponsors for a single event.
Maybe, but I am happy with OSMF keeping a low profile. Before the last election to the OSMF board, lofty plans were circulated how to make OSMF into a strong organisation with 10.000 members and hire full-time personnel for fundraising and management. I opposed these ideas because I feel that such an organisation would quickly turn into a self-feeding behemoth that is more at home in the corporate world than in OSM. If someone wants to approach sponsors on a local or national level, that's no problem and I am sure that OSMF will give them the support they need. (We run a similar setup here in Germany where FOSSGIS e.V. will help out anyone who needs a "legal contact" or someone to sign a contract - but they don't, on their own, go searching for sponsors.) If, on the other hand, there is nobody who wants to do the hard work of finding sponsors, then why should OSMF - they're only people like you and me. Ask them to do things that nobody in the project wants to do himself and you are inevitably asking to set up an organisation that uses money to pay people to do the jobs that nobody in the project wants to do. Certainly a valid way of advancing the project, but in my eyes it carries the danger of, little by little, taking the whole project out of the hands of hobbyists. Before too long, we'll be a membership organisation where central command runs the GPS vans and individual participation is reduced to paying a membership fee and receiving a bi-monthly full-colour membership magazine. Bye Frederik _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
