Talk:Membership Rules

Democratic Problems

First I want to say that there needs to be a section on exclusion of charter members.

Secondly abit flamey, but please bear with me: I base these thoughts on a dislike of what is called do-acracy in the FAQ. Since there are 45 charter members of OSGeo at the moment, the organization is already large enough to have problems. OR not, perhaps you will always get along fine and dandy.

One problem is that the charter members are the only ones that can elect board members and new charter members. The reason:

it would be technically possible for a group of self-interested Members to "hijack" the Board[..]turning it away from our basic goals and principles

What you protect here are the founding/charter members economic rights, not the foundations principles. It's a democratic right to be able to hijack, and it's the job of the constitution to protect the principles. The principles should no be upheld by a friendship club.

The criteria for being a charter member are good but very vague. How can one decide all those things, it will make the application process very beaurocratic, or biased for people that already know charter members.

Emj 12:59, 22 June 2006 (CEST)