On Feb 3, 2013, at 3:37 AM, Robin Paulson wrote: > On 2013-02-03 12:14, Michal Migurski wrote: >> Communication is hard, and there are ways to do it that make people >> feel like they're getting a complete story instead of a confused >> glimpse through an accidentally-open door. Simon's mail left out a lot >> of important things, most notably that he's a member of the OSMF Board >> and that it was an official statement. > > Michal, what do you mean by "official"? > > from wikipedia, i see: > "An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless > whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or > government and participates in the exercise of authority (either his own or > that of his superior and/or employer, public or legally private)." > > which concerns me no end. what position of authority does simon hold? over > whom?
Simon is the elected chairman of the OSMF board, and can speak on its behalf. He holds a position of authority over the Geocode Inc. issue because apparently the foundation received a C&D. > what significance does the osmf board hold? they speak for themselves, not > anyone else. That's exactly the question at hand in this particular argument. We seem to have an OSMF that's not effective at communicating, and large parts of the community don't see the value they offer. Your takeaway is that the board is not representative of the project and should not exist at all. My feeling is that a project needs a political structure to survive. In either case, Geocode Inc. believes that the OSMF are the right people to receive a C&D. Ultimately, someone needs to own the domain name and the API and the servers it runs on. That's who the Geocodes of the world are going to target. It would be best if that someone was answerable to the larger community through a democratic process of some sort, so in my view the OSMF is a requirement. I'm not frustrated that we *have* a board, I'm frustrated that the board we've got doesn't seem effective at communicating its purpose or much of anything else. They're bad at politics. If they were good at politics, you wouldn't be disagreeing with the idea of a board because you'd be thankful for the provision of a quality API and the decisive resolution of legal threats from trademark trolls. For what it's worth, I was on the US OSMF board last year, and the most important thing I learned about myself is that I'm bad at politics, too, so I totally understand that this stuff is hard. -mike. ---------------------------------------------------------------- michal migurski- contact info and pgp key: sf/ca http://mike.teczno.com/contact.html _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
