Should OSI be representative/member-based?
Submitted by Ken Coar on Tue, 2007-07-31 17:26. :: Sandbox
This is the basic question. From 1998 through 2007, the Open Source Initiative has consisted solely of its board of directors. New directors have been selected by the existing ones.
This is not a terribly representative model. Does it work adequately? Should OSI be representative? Should it be a membership-based organisation?
If OSI becomes representative, its direction/vision can be changed by any member with enough influence, including SugarCRM or any other quasi-open-source initiative. I think leadership needs to be limited to a few people that have the best interests of OSI at heart.
But I do think it should be member based. In my view, membership becomes a way of helping out the community that an individual/organization is a part of. It also helps bring OSI into the public's attention and makes OS more "respectable", if that makes sense.
Certainly on of the problems with SPI has been the fact that they have been held hostage to Debian politics. Certainly we would not want OSI to fall into the same problem.
I think that if membership is narrow, then the risk that you describe is valid, but it is best mitigated by broadening membership (a major undertaking at SPI at the moment).
I am *all for* making OSI a representative organization. However, if it is done poorly I recognize it would be the end of SPI.
A few tips:
1) Establish criteria for membership early. Require that members reapply annually (reapplying members could be automatically accepted but it keeps the member roles from becoming filled with people who are not involved).
2) Go out of your way to recruit people from a lot of smaller projects before recruiting larger projects. Try to structure your recruiting so that you don't end up with a majority of members from a single open soruce project.
3) Focus on building a diverse member base.
I think really the question of membership boils down to this: what is the purpose of membership? the answer to this question should determine the answers to the rest of the questions posted (process, benefits, etc.).