The OSI Membership Project

For the first eight years of its existence, from the time it was
created in 1998 through 2006, OSI has been a small number (5-9)
of people primarily focussed on licensing issues. However, the
continual references to OSI's role vis-à-vis 'the
community,' and the actual words of the organisation's chartered
purpose from the Bylaws, have finally
generated enough energy-of-thought to see about expanding its
role.

... this corporation shall: (1) educate the public about the
advantages of open source software [software that users are
free to modify and redistribute]; (2) encourage the software
community to participate in open source software development;
(3) identify how software users' objectives are best served
through open source software; (4) persuade organizations and
software authors to distribute source software freely they
otherwise would not distribute; (5) provide resources for sharing
information about open source software and licenses; (6) assist
attorneys to craft open source licenses; (7) manage a certification
program to allow use of one or more certification marks in
association with open source software; and (8) advocate for open
source principles.

So the Membership Project was formed in 2005 and tasked with
coming up with recommendations for the Board about how the
organisational structure could/should change to support a more
grass-roots involvement through membership.

Request for Proposals

In April 2006 the Membership project
>openly solicited
proposals for how a membership structure could be applied to the
OSI.

Unfortunately, 'openly solicited' doesn't mean 'solicited far and
wide;' the request was restricted to the project's own mailing
list, to which people have been directed and invited in a wholly
ad hoc manner.

Questions

One of the issues is the organisation's composition:
should it remain a small number of largely self-selecting people,
or should it be expanded to provide for and solicit participation from
the entire community of developers, providers, end-users, and everyone
else? Should the organisation remain focussed primarily on developers,
or should companies, governments, and end-users be considered 'customers'
of OSI?

Stuff

• Individual membership
• Corporate membership
• Area/regional reps
• 'Assembly'
• Fee/no-fee, membership tiers
• Membership as fund source?