[foundation-board] "members" language on /governance page

Wed Sep 15 09:10:07 UTC 2010

On 14 September 2010 23:26, Jordan S Hatcher
<jordan at opencontentlawyer.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> I briefly mentioned the use of "members" on the /governance page and the need to make it clear that formal "membership" of our company limited by guarantee (the equivalent of a shareholder in a profit making company).  We have to be clear that any kind of OKF membership doesn't mean being a member of Open Knowledge Foundation Limited.

I have to say I think this is the page as I drafted it largely and as
submitted earlier in the year to the board. I think at some point it
said Network Member to explicitly distinguish from 'company limited by
guarantee' members but (if i recall correctly) in discussion on
okfn-discuss it was decided to go with simpler 'member'.

I apologize for not including a more explicit disclaimer and I think
this probably passed the board by when I submitted it here (there is
quite a lot).

I have just added the following NB to the governance page.

<quote>
NB: 'Membership' in the sense discussed here is not formal
"membership" of the Open Knowledge Foundation Limited (the company
limited by guarantee which forms the underlying legal entity for the
Foundation). 'Membership' in the sense discussed above implies no
rights or responsibilities in regard of this company limited by
guarantee, and in particular implies no right to elect the board of
that entity.
</quote>

@Jordan: why don't we get you an account on okfn.org so you can edit
this sort of thing ...

> Forgive me if it's there and I missed it, but I do not see this distinction on the current page:
>
> <http://okfn.org/governance/>
>
> I understand from Rufus that this distinction used to be there.

I believe I was mistaken.

> Has the page on the site changed? Jo?
>
> I'm concerned because the current page makes "members" look like a voting status inside the organisation, including by requiring "members" to be in working groups, and that the board can "revoke" membership. Parts of it look like they were copied directly from the ASF website?

No, none was copied directly from the ASF. Some was copied pretty
directly from OSGeo.

Regards,

Rufus

> Can we change this ASAP or revert it back to the previous version and make this version a "draft"?
>
> Thanks!
>
> ~Jordan
> ____
> Mr. Jordan S Hatcher, JD, LLM
>
> More at: <http://www.jordanhatcher.com>
> Co-founder:  <http://www.opendatacommons.org>
> Open Knowledge: <http://www.okfn.org/>
>
>
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