Arnulf Christl (OSGeo) wrote:
I want to add that for me it is also a goal to limit OSGeo's growth wrt the number of paid staff and budget. We can make good use with 100k more for hardware, services and to have more reserves for the conferences. But I believe that we should not let the budget grow beyond ~half a million - not even in five years. If there is money to make then it should be made by businesses. They in turn are welcome to sponsor OSGeo. By supporting FOSS business development OSGeo automagically supports itself.
Arnulf, I also am not keen on a big budget organization, though I wouldn't want to put any specific limit on it. Areas I *would* like to see grow budget wise is "project sponsorship" as a mechanism for user organizations to share in supporting project development. Of course, that will depend to a large part on the success of projects in soliciting funds and putting them to effective use. One thing I am leery about, but that has been suggested by some, is OSGeo trying to provide professional services as a way of raising money. I think this is best left to the FOSS business community. I feel this way for two reasons. (1) OSGeo does not really have the managerial strength to effectively deliver customer oriented projects. (2) I don't want to compete against our partners in the business community who are already providing so much of the important "push" for free geospatial software development and deployment. I would like to see growing sponsorship funds to help support educational, promotional and community oriented efforts by OSGeo. Quite a bit of this can be effectively done at the local level by local chapters.
Local Chapters should grow by themselves, in most cases an small initial stub created from "within" OSGeo "Global" is enough to get going. And as Howard said - the life of OSGeo is within the local chapters.
I think local chapters are important, but I'm not sure I'd go as far as you on this. I think global project, and osgeo special interest group mailing lists can also be where a good deal of the "life" of OSGeo is. My "next 5 years" list might look something like: - A broad set of quality software projects under the OSGeo banner that feel they are getting good value from OSGeo in terms of promotion, branding and systems support. Furthermore that the developer and user communities feel they have a fair (equal opportunity) environment to contribute and effect their projects. - Educational support resources sufficient to be deployed directly for post-secondary educational organizations wanting to roll out a GIS/geospatial program based on free software *and* a significant number of organizations who have done so and are publically involved in supporting further improvements to the materials. - Lots of local chapters pursuing a diversity of local initiatives with lots of inter chapter, chapter-project, and chapter-osgeo linkages. Hopefully local chapters will be hot-beds of innovative activities even when "OSGeo" is somewhat slow moving. - OSGeo facilitated delivery of vetted, integrated software stacks "ready to use" for user organizations, and considered "enterprise ready". Think of OSGeo4W, Debian GIS and the recent FOSS4G LiveDVD as examples of forms this might take. - A continued strong FOSS4G, acknowledged as the primary global meeting of the tribes, though it might not be significantly larger than it is now. - Financial income coming from a wide diversity of sponsors, most of which are end-user organizations. Also some money coming in the form of grants in support of specific activities (such as work on educational products or standards participation). - The organization has sustained income sufficient to support an ED, project systems requirements, with enough money left over to pursue a variety of initiatives. I think sufficient funding would be in the $250000 to $400000 area. - OSGeo pursuing a variety of modest cost, non-permanent initiatives. Things like holding special meetings with travel support for "desktop integration" or "standards development and implementation sprints". Best regards, -- ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, warmer...@pobox.com light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush | Geospatial Programmer for Rent _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss