[okfn-coord] Formal partner or 'branch' organisation in Germany

Wed Oct 7 00:50:16 UTC 2009

Jo: I'd be particularly interested in your input here on the situation
with OSGeo.

2009/10/6 Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org>:
[...]
> They are now at the stage of making a legal entity for the network -
> and are wondering whether to create a German non-profit (specifically
> an 'eingetragener verein' - registered society or association), or
> whether there is another way they could be legally related to the OKF.

Would they like to be e.g. the OKFN German chapter?

> I wonder if anyone has any advice on how we should move on this? I
> think this has longer term implications, for what the OKF is. Jordan:
> do you have any legal suggestions? I guess obvious parallel cases
> would be with Wikimedia Foundation/Wikimedia local chapters, Creative
> Commons/Creative Commons National Projects, Open Street Map/OSM local
> groups. I am under the impression that WM have most formal local
> groups (legal incorporation, money moving between them, etc.),
> followed by CC (where project leads may be affiliated with
> universities and other orgs) followed by OSM (which may be informal
> interest groups - not legal organisations).

On the structural side of things I think we want to distinguish:

Partners: other organizations which are allied in aims and with whom
we have collaborations or regular contact and exchange of info. We may
further want to distinguish "official" ones (listed on our website,
longer relationship) and unofficial ones.

Chapters/Arms/Groups: more closely linked to OKFN like our working
groups or projects (be they formal or informal in setup and
structure).

For this second category we already have:
<http://wiki.okfn.org/LocalGroups> which correspond to a fairly
informal and loose affiliation (hence the Group terminology).

For these guys - if they really want to get closely involved with the
OKF, groups may be a bit too informal and may want something more like
a "Chapter" with its implication of closer and semi-formal
relationship.

Perhaps we are also getting to the point where resurrecting the
distinction between the "Open Knowledge Foundation" and the "Open
Knowledge Foundation Network" would be useful.

Thinking it over my conclusion is that to keep things simple for the
present the best thing would be to go down and OSM-type approach and
invite these guys to form an OKFN German chapter/group.

> Thinking about it, my feeling is that local chapters/groups/arms could
> make a lot of sense in terms of working on, e.g. public domain or open
> government data across Europe - with different languages, different
> national organisations and so on. Also means, for example, that we
> could open doors to new funding avenues. What do others think?

Going forward I think we definitely want to do something like this.

Rufus