OGC Membership

OGC and OSGeo have an agreement by which a small number of OSGeo community members can become OGC members for a short period of time. This page describes OSGeo's processes and procedures for the agreement.

The actual agreement is documented here. This is page intended to be a simpler explanation of the formal agreement, but in case of any questions the formal agreement is the one to follow.

Membership Process

To obtain a membership, you must:

1. Determine if you are eligible for membership, based on the criteria listed below.
2. Agree to the IPR policies described below.
3. Submit a short summary of why you want an OGC membership and what work you plan to do with it. This summary should be sent to the selection committee (listed below) and CC'd to OSGeo standards list.
4. Every three months, send a summary of what you have done with your membership to the selection committee and the standards list.

Memberships are valid for six months, after which you may reapply.

Membership Criteria

To be eligible for membership, you must meet these criteria (taken from here):

• You must be a self-employed consultant or individual who has not assigned their intellectual property rights (IPR) to another person or legal entity (employer, university, research institution, etc).
• You must not be a full-time contractor to a single employer (except when that employer organization is a member of the OGC).

Rationale: memberships normally cost money, and so obviously OGC doesn't want someone to be using a "free" OSGeo membership just to avoid paying the fees to be a regular OGC member.

Additionally, you must (obviously) be working on an open source project.

IPR Policies

OGC has a strict set of policies regarding intellectual property rights which you must agree to. In brief, the policies state that:

• ...?...

The full (23 page) IPR policies document can be found here (PDF).

Selection Committee

The selection committee keeps track of who is using our OGC memberships and what they are doing with them. The committee is appointed by the board of directors and periodically reports back to the board on the status of our OGC activity.

The members of this committee are currently:

• Arnulf Christl
• Michael P. Gerlek

The committee operates transparently, recording its action on the standards mailing list.

Current Members

1. Gerald Fenoy term ends on 29 September 2012 (re-application has been granted)
2. Jeff McKenna term ends on 9 December 2012
3. vacant
4. vacant
5. vacant