English version based on an automatic translation with deepl.

Following the discussion about my post on FOSSGIS membership fees, it has become clear to me that my account – and especially the suggestions I made – are somewhat incomplete.

I have quite clearly criticized the fact that, since becoming a local representative of OpenStreetMap in Germany in 2017, the FOSSGIS association has failed to resolve the latent conflict between its role as an advocate for professional developers and users of free and open-source software in the GIS sector and its role as a representative of the German hobbyist mapping community. And I have made suggestions regarding membership fees and the association’s cultural openness to address this problem. However, these too – as should be clear to most – would not truly resolve the conflict.

Therefore, I would like to outline here, as a supplement, how the conflict could be addressed at the strategic level and, hopefully, resolved in a sustainable manner.

The problem with the association’s current organizational structure is that opening it up substantially to the hobby mapper community will only work if a large number of hobby mappers join the association and become active within it – bringing with them their own ideas about working methods and their culture of cooperation. The result would be a takeover of the association by the OSM community. Compared to the current situation, the problem would essentially just be reversed. The reason for this lies in the association’s structure, which is centralized at both the board and member levels and based on majority decisions.

The obvious solution would be to split FOSSGIS into two associations. And if FOSSGIS were actually taken over by the OSM community (which – as already indicated – would be hardly realistic due to the widespread lack of interest in the German hobby-mapping community, even under favorable conditions), this would be the most likely outcome, as FOSS developers and users would then presumably organize themselves elsewhere.

However, this solution would undermine the opportunities and synergies mentioned in the previous post, which exist precisely in the connection between Free and Open Source Software and OpenStreetMap.

A federal structure would be the strategy for sustainably balancing professional advocacy and representation with the organization of the hobbyist mapping community within an association. The two major segments in the association’s goals and its operations would largely coexist autonomously, could utilize shared structures, but would not be required to do so. Members could freely participate in the systematic pursuit of the respective goals of the two autonomous parts of the association, based on their own distinct formal and informal rules, without having to submit to the rules of the other segment.

It is important that this (internal) autonomy is actually formalized – in other words, that we don’t just say: “Yes, you can act freely in your working group, but in case of doubt, the board or the general assembly can shut you down at any time by a simple majority vote”.

To ensure that the whole thing remains an association not only formally but also de facto, a supervisory body would need to be created to mediate between the autonomous structures and the necessary and sensible central decisions (for example, regarding budget issues). This body would need to be composed of equal representation, ensuring that one part of the association does not dominate the other.

This type of structure is nothing new; it already exists, for example, in associations that manage individual large FOSS projects. In such cases, there is usually a supervisory board composed of an equal number of developers and users.

I realize that the chances of the FOSSGIS association actually undergoing such a fundamental restructuring (i.e., the general assembly securing the necessary 3/4 majority) are significantly lower than the chances of my ideas regarding membership fees being implemented. My point is to make it clear that this is a problem that can be practically solved if the collective will is there, and not an unsolvable dilemma that we simply have to live with.