[OSCOM] membership / meritocracy

Seth Gottlieb wrote:
> For me, the perception of outsiders and insiders comes from reading the
> bylaws:
> 
>    To be eligible for membership, a person or entity must be nominated
>    by a current member of the association. The Board decides on admission.
>    Any membership decision made by the Board can be challenged by any member
>    of the association, whereupon the next Meeting of Members will then
>    decide on that person's membership.
> 
> Plus the fact that Become a Member link on the Get Involved page is unlinked.
> The list of members on
> http://www.oscom.org/get-involved/organization/members.html is small implying
> that it is a small group.

it remained small because of neglect and also because of these perceived 
hurdles. as discussed elsewhere, i see my biggest failure in OSCOM in 
not being able to draw more people in and become OSCOM stakeholders.

> It kind of feels like becoming a member of ASF, rather than a membership
> organization.  That may in intentional and I don't see anything wrong with
> that.  However, it does appear that you need to jump through some hoops and
> make the right friends to get into the club.
> 
> Not complaining, just explaining.

the original idea was to have a meritocracy just like the ASF, but maybe 
that needs to be revisited. just about anything at OSCOM could as well 
be done without a legal entity, and might make things easier too. we 
formed the legal entity for two reasons: to be able to have a budget and 
organize conferences, and because the swiss like to form organizations ;)

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