Hi Jeff,
You are right, commercial-friendliness certainly does play a part in
LocationTech. The way I've seen that enacted is by the use of the
Eclipse Foundation's legal department to ensure that the projects which
are supported by LocationTech are declared by a legal team to be free of
proprietary or wrongly-licensed code. In this way, commercial entities
can use the projects with some assurance that they will not be sued down
the line for code that was not actually open in the way they thought it
was.
Also, there is a steering committee that makes decisions about how the
budget will be used. The budget mainly consists of member company's
dues. The members of the steering committee are decided by membership
level (large membership gets representation on the steering committee)
as well as a lower-membership level elected committee. There is also
representation by the developers, who vote independently of any company
and are there to represent the committers on the project. For more
information, you can read through some links here:
https://www.locationtech.org/charter
https://www.locationtech.org/election2015
In practice, as a maintainer of an open source project and developer,
what LocationTech has meant to me is support for my project in ways that
are not centered around business. To me it's been a place where I've
gotten to collaborate with similar open source projects and have my
project be promoted through events and other channels; for instance I
participate in Google Summer of Code and Facebook Open Academy as a
mentor through the Eclipse Foundation. Perhaps these are needs that can
also be served by OSGeo, but they have in practice been met by
LocationTech. From my perspective as a project lead and open source
developer, that there are multiple channels that can potentially support
me and my project is a great thing and signs of a healthy domain.
I did not start LocationTech. So for me it's not a question of, why
should LocationTech be created when there is already OSGeo; LocationTech
already exists, and I don't think it's up to me to question it's
existence. Nor do I think it's a useful exercise to question the
existence of something that clearly has support and is supporting
others. I can only decide which organizations I believe in and support,
and what I can get out of those organizations as far as them supporting
me. So on a personal level, my thoughts are that both OSGeo and
LocationTech are good organizations. I'd like to find ways to support
both organizations, and find ways both organizations can support me and
my project.
On a more general level, I'm against centralization. Having diversity in
governance structures, funding models and support channels is a good
thing, and I don't want there to be only one "true" organization that I
can look to for support. However, like I mentioned, the ideal would be
that those organizations could figure out how to use their difference
skill sets to work together on making the community as a whole move
forward. And that is what I am hoping OSGeo and LocationTech can do (as
well as any other related organizations).
Jody did a talk at FOSS4G NA 2015 on some of the differences between
LocationTech and OSGeo, I recommend it:
https://youtu.be/sdpEa6XdQEo
Best,
Rob
On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 10:54 AM, Jeff McKenna
<jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com <mailto:jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com>>
wrote:
Hi Rob,
Thank you for your very thoughtful response. You summarize the
situation very well. I think talking openly like this on this
topic, is the only way to make this all work.
It sounds like I am wrong about LocationTech's goals; at the same
time then, if that is the case, that LocationTech is not about
commerce (doesn't "commercially friendly" encourage business
interest?), then what was the need to create a separate new
foundation, also focused on growing Open Source geospatial software?
I hope we can speak openly here Rob, I do not mean any disrespect to
you personally or to LocationTech (some take it personal). Please
share here the reasons you see to have 2 foundations focused on the
same goal.
Thanks,
-jeff
On 2015-11-12 11:37 AM, Rob Emanuele wrote:
Hi Jeff,
I'm sorry to hear you are being bullied in private messages. It is
perhaps best to bring in the Code of Conduct committee to help
handle
this; direct threats and private bulling tactics seem in
violation with
the CoC, and there should be steps taken to ensure that our
community
doesn't have bulling in our midst that goes unaddressed.
I'm disappointed that you take LocationTech's core goal as "to
promote
business and give those businesses a stage". Your point of view and
behavior on the lists makes more sense knowing that, though; if you
believe that LocationTech is really about promoting the
businesses, and
not the greater community, then having LocationTech involved in the
FOSS4G conferences would diminish the non-business community
members'
role in the conference, which would be a Bad thing. However, as
a member
of the LocationTech PMC and someone who was/is involved in the
FOSS4G NA
2015 and FOSS4G NA 2016 process, as well as someone involved in the
FOSS4G 2017 Philadelphia bid, I want to assure you that is not
the case.
There is real focus and real work being done at LocationTech to
help the
community of developers and users of FOSS4G. In this instance
I'm using
FOSS4G for what the acronym actually means, Free and Open Source
Software for Geospatial, not referring to the conference that has
captured that name. Both LocationTech and OSGeo exist to support
FOSS4G,
and the greater community (greater then both of those organizations)
that use and develop FOSS4G. There are differences in the
organizations
for sure, and I think highlighting those differences and really
understanding how they serve the community in different ways is
important. The ideal scenario that I see is that both organizations
would use those differences to collaborate and have a
sum-greater-than-it's-parts type of support system for FOSS4G.
Instead,
we have a situation where there's distrust, finger pointing, and
political "power plays" against each other. We have the
president of one
of the organizations characterizing the core goal of the other
organization in a dangerously wrong way. We have decisions and
discussions about a million dollar revenue generating conference
focused
on that million dollars, rather then how to ensure that
conference does
the best job possible at supporting and pushing forward the
community.
We have the precious resource that is the energy of volunteers being
spent on political infighting rather than on collaboration towards
serving the community. I'm not sure the best path forward for
this, but
I want to declare that the situation as I see it is bad for the
community, collaboration between OSGeo and LocationTech would be
good
for the community, and I hope as a whole we can move towards
that better
future.
I hear your concerns for the price of the FOSS4G NA tickets,
though I'll
point out to people who are following along that it's not as
simple as a
flat $1000 dollar rate. I encourage you to look at the registration
pricing breakdown when it's published for FOSS4G NA 2016, be sure to
apply for a non-corporate pass if you will not be reimbursed by a
company, and to apply for a scholarship if the cost is still too
high.
Also, if you are giving a talk, registration is free, so please
submit!
The Call For Proposals is now open (https://2016.foss4g-na.org/cfp).
Jeff, your presence was missed at FOSS4G NA 2015 and I hope that
you can
come to Raleigh for FOSS4G NA 2016.
Best,
Rob
On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 8:40 AM, Jeff McKenna
<jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com
<mailto:jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com>
<mailto:jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com
<mailto:jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com>>>
wrote:
On 2015-11-12 7:01 AM, Jody Garnett wrote:
I have gotten a number of private emails expressing
concerns about
LocationTech being involved in several of the foss4g
bids. I
guess I had
the opposite concern last year when there was the joint
OSGeo /
LocationTech foss4gna conference. I was kind of
embarrassed our
behavior
as a community - would prefer to see us as welcoming
and supportive
(especially as we had a first time organizer that could
use our
support).
Hi Jody,
I am very glad that you brought this up publicly. Lately I
too have
received very disturbing direct emails, containing threats
of "if
this happens you watch" "karma you watch yourself" "if we
lose you
watch out" and direct bullying tactics, for speaking my
mind on this
issue. The same people sending these threats will not speak
publicly on this, so I have asked them to stop sending me these
messages, but the messages continue, so I have stopped
answering
them. These are "power-play" emails sent directly to me,
but I will
tell them here publicly, bullying me will not stop me from
speaking
openly about OSGeo's one event all year, the global FOSS4G.
(for
those not following the 2017 conference discussions, you
would have
to read a long thread to get caught up
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Call-to-discuss-FOSS4G-2017-proposals-prior-to-voting-td5234235.html).
As someone just wrote last night on another list, likely
there would
be no one else that has attended more FOSS4G events, regional,
global, anything, than myself. I make a point of going to a
FOSS4G
event, to help grow the local community, no matter what
size of the
event or where it is. Lately in my FOSS4G travels I have
noticed a
return to our FOSS4G roots, where the popular events are
very low
cost, aimed at developers, users, students, researchers,
and the
smaller companies trying to make a living (a great recent
example is
the FOSS4G-Como event this past July). Getting back to the
topic of
your message: I too have been embarrassed by recent
FOSS4G-NorthAmerica events; I was shocked to see the 1,000 USD
registration fee there.
But I was not too upset, because no one is traveling the small
FOSS4Gs like me to see the difference, and I didn't see
complaints
voiced from the local NorthAmerican community. LocationTech
involved in FOSS4G-NA is a good thing, to promote business
and give
those businesses a stage; the core goal of LocationTech.
However now we are in the process for deciding the global
FOSS4G
event for 2017, OSGeo's flagship event, attended by the
international community, and we must be very careful.
Working with
foundations is good (hence all of OSGeo's great MoUs), and
I'll use
the upcoming example that the 2016 team is considering, giving
LocationTech a 90 minute slot in the program for their
projects (and
the same for OSGeo, UN, likely OGC, and other
organizations). This
is a wonderful way for OSGeo's FOSS4G event to involve other
organizations. I hope that LocationTech will also give
OSGeo a 90
minute slot in their big conference someday as well; this
would be
exactly what I see as best-case scenario.
On the other hand, not signing an MoU, and then just
contacting all
of our 2017 bidders, is quite a different method to get to the
table. Instead of a long-standing MoU agreement that would
foster
the relationship throughout the years, as we have with so many
organizations, we are faced with a decision now that
involves both
foundations and 1,000,000 USD (the annual FOSS4G event
generates a
lot of revenue, making this very attractive to professional
conference companies all over the world, I was phoned
yesterday by
one from Europe, for example). The money is there, huge
money, and
huge exposure for these companies. And their jobs are on
the line,
in their minds. Hence this situation we are forced to deal
with
now, and these nasty private messages being sent to me.
Let's try to remain positive though, as we have 3 great
bids for
FOSS4G 2017, and a solid team working hard already to make
FOSS4G-2016 in Bonn another amazing event. OSGeo has never
been so
active and vibrant as so many initiatives and location
chapters grow
all around the world.
Thanks for listening, and thank you Jody for bringing this
topic to
the public lists.
-jeff
--
Jeff McKenna
President, OSGeo
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Jeff_McKenna
