Frederik Ramm wrote: > I recently asked bo...@osmf for a list of members and received the > answer that providing such a list might clash with members' privacy; but > they said they thought that creating a members-only mailing list would > be a good idea (I expect this to be done any day now). So I guess that, > once the list is set up, if you find you receive mails from that list > then you are a member ;-)
I was going to say that they were absolutely right not to give it to you as it would certainly never have occurred to me that anybody could ask for list and I wouldn't have expected it to be given out, but... > The proper contact at OSMF would be the membership secretary. I don't > know anything about their policies regarding renewals. However, I > *think* that it was planned to have some kind of grace period, i.e. if > your membership has lapsed because you didn't renew, you might have the > chance to just pay now and it counts as having renewed after your > previous membership expired. But don't take my word for any of this, I > do not have any more access to board meeting minutes than anyone else. As far as I know you should get an email when your renewal is due. I certainly did last year. > I thought that the membership fee was a yearly amount but maybe I was > wrong. There are many things in the Articles of Association and the > underlying Companies Act that on first reading seem to run contrary to > how business in OSMF is conducted, and I put this down to myself not > knowing which bits are important and which bits are subject to > interpretation. For example I would have thought that the Companies Act > says that the register of members must be available on request (even to > non-members so could as well be put on the web site), but who am I to > know the intricate details of the UK system - there are probably myriad > "case law" issues that say otherwise and only a lawyer will know what > counts. ...coming back to the point from the first paragraph, you are probably quite right here. Because the foundation is a limited company, and members of the foundation are the members of that company, the Companies Act probably does require them to give the list to anybody that asks. Certainly for a company limited by share capital the list of shareholders has to be provided (which causes some problems in fact) and the list of members is the equivalent for a company limited by guarantee so it quite probably does have to be divulged on request, even to non-members. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
