OSArch Community

Organizational Structure and Governance of OSArch

  1. M by MaartenFrough on 23 Jan 2021 # +6 votes

    Thank everyone for this excellent discussion!

    Great to hear about all your thoughts/ideas regarding Open Source BIM Developments/OSArch. Hereby a summary of my considerations/thoughts/ideas/plans regarding this subject. Looking forward to a discussion about this!

    1. A global legal entity for OSArch would be very good idea! A Foundation by example.

    2. IMHO Local Chapters would be perfect! So they have a certain authority when starting activity like fundraising campaigns or meetings.

    3. The position and the importance of the OS Developers should be a very important key pillar in the organisation.

    4. The board of the foundation should not take a very strong position regarding the direction of the development of the OS BIM software. It's better if that stays within the OS-community.

    5. They should facilitate the following things:

      a. Financial support for the development of OS BIM.

      b. Support documentation, tutorials, library creations, know how.

    6. There should also be a Committee of Recommendation with developers from the OS Community.

      a. Members of this committee will give recommendations for who of the OS Developers will be financially supported

    7. Financial support to developers should be for a period of at least 12 months. 4 months before the end of the 12 months a decision is made regarding for extension of the support. There should be no requirements to the financial support so that the developers will stay free in what they do. They can decide by themselves which direction they will go.

    8. The foundation can also employ developers on the long term. But perhaps that will make things complicated.

    9. Board members: Board members should have very logical skills to be a board member like:

      a. Cooperation skills.

      b. Experience as architect/engineer/developer.

      c. An essential skill/property of the members of the board is IMHO Humility combined with Ambition. The humility takes care of social harmony. Very important also because of a lot of communication goes via forum and emails and misunderstandings and irritations can easily enter the scene.

    10. Perhaps board members should be chosen from local chapters.

    Risks:

    1. For a couple of years I was a treasurer in a music foundation. After almost 4 years the whole board stopped because of a conflict with the leader. Some observations:

    i. In many boards there is a lot of powerplay and self-loving people who are more interested in themselves instead of the aim/goal of the foundation and are unable to discuss on arguments.

    ii. The foundation structure and roles should match the structure and the role in the real world. If there is a discrepancy between the two, sooner or later things will go wrong.

    iii. Duration of board membership should be limited.

    1. Potential risks in getting things structured and organised:

    a. The danger of Power & Money: the weird thing regarding power is that on one or the other way positions with power have a high attraction for persons who are more interested in their own person & their career and importance then in the goal/aim of the position/foundation where they are in. I think every technician has had any experience in his live that his manager/director is more interested in powerplay/his person then in the real subject.

    b. You see it in several Revit/BIM user groups. In several cases there are a lot of managers/theoretical persons/BIM-managers with their own pet peeves. Engineers, managers and architects who are more in-depths start to ignore it because they are tired of political BIM-games.

    c. Sometimes BIM-managers from large architectural firms/building contractors become involved. Some of them have a certain arrogance that their opinion or/and the opinion of their employer is leading because they are this and this big in the industry. Instead of having in-depth objective discussions on subjects they start using arguments which are based on the size of their company. In other words: the principle of powerplay. This powerplay aspect can bring great harm to the OS Community because it stands perpendicular to the principles of the OS Community.

    Goals for 2021

    1. Last year I thought a lot about setting up a foundation for OS fundraising. That's still the plan. Perhaps it's possible to name this as an OSArch chapter. But you can also start fundraising without it. Just spread the OS ideas to medium and big companies and ask them to ask donating.

    2. Last week I had my first fundraising talk with a big architectural firm in the Netherlands. Names will follow later on LinkedIn & Twitter. They were very enthusiastic and will support at least 5K/year. (I should have asked more I think now) :-)

    3. Next week and the week after next week I have 2 other fundraising meetings with other architectural firms. Hopefully the amount of donation via Patreon and Libera Pay will experience exponential growth in the coming 6 months so that several developers like Yorik van Havre, Realthunder and many more can start committing 100% of their time to Open Source Development. They are very valuable creators and it is a real pity that they cannot commit 100% of the their time to their creations because of the lack of funding on this moment.

    4. So that's also a way to look at it. As soon as the OS donations will increase several developers will receive more money and will contribute more of their time. I think other people will also follow. Everyone can see what the developers are doing via Github etc. So perhaps it's an evolutionary process.

    Looking forward to your response.

  2. D by duncan on 18 Dec 2020 #

    I'm going to stick neck out and say we should start talking to https://opencollective.com/opensource about setting something up. As far as I can tell they can help us with a lot of the admin and transparency and structure while we grow and maybe eventually become strong enough that we can be fully independent. At the moment when I look at how many people are willing to spend time and energy on organization work I don't see any other realistic option.

    So please read about them and if you don't have some important objection then I think we should go further looking into how it works. I think we need at least three people who are committed to going into the details of this so we can move forward. I am happy to be one of those people but will not do it alone as this is both unsustainable and undemocratic. This little group could then make a presentation of the facts and call everyone serious about this group for an opinion.

    I have previously talked with Dion and others about using LiberaPay and they have a good solution but they themselves suggest looking at opencollective for larger projects that need to provide financial information and transparency. Also my own bank has given me problems transfering money to LiberaPay. So they are clearly part of the solution but are not enough alone.

  3. T by theoryshaw on 22 Dec 2020 # +1 votes

    Thanks @duncan for looking into this. I think this is a good option to explore. I can help.

  4. M by Moult on 22 Dec 2020 #

    Go for it!

  5. D by duncan on 26 Dec 2020 #

    @Cyril commented in the thread Open Source Design collective but I will reply here.

    @Cyril said:

    I think implications of having a fiscal host in USA should be carefully studied.

    If it similar to having a company in based I would say «Hell no ! ». Because that would mean it would be subject to software export law. And so our friend from countries disliked by USA state would not be officially allowed. Remember that not long time ago many Iranians FOSS friend got kicked from Github because of this *** law. A big protest repo was set up at this occasion.

    Similar for patent trolls does having a fiscal host in US imply an exposure to theses parasites?

    I understand considering message on chat why it was think of but we are not going to set up a fiscal host in each country to make all companies which donate eligible for fiscal deduction no ?

    Every country has it own legal advantage and drawback but regarding FOSS and privacy USA (and they are not the only one) have unfortunately a bunch of laws unfriendly to FOSS and privacy in software.

    I might be worry for nothing but I think it worths to check.

    @Cyril you are totally right that this any many other things could be on a list of issues to consider. But without people who have to to look into all these things we still need to do something. My thought is that Open Source Collective could be a good place to start. Please add your thought here and anything concrete to https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=Funding_sources#Charity_or_Foundation to it doesn't get lost in this conversation which will be on for a long time. I'm just not sure we should wait until all our questions are answered when an apparently good solution is so easy. I've added some of your thoughts to that text.

    I have earlier argued against trying to hurry up. That was because I thought it would be a whole nightmare load of work. But with the way Open Collective and Open Source Collective are organized this problem is much smaller. As it stands we have no way to begin applying for and accepting funds for our work and on behalf of others. And as @Moult s recent comment in chat shows (his was offered 1000USD but only to a 501c US registered charity) we might benefit from having something set up soon.

    But again, I'm not planning to make any moves before we are a few more people willing to spend some time looking into this and managing it. Your comments @Cyril help by bringing some important issues to light. For now @theoryshaw has stepped forward. That makes us two. I suggest we need a few more people.

  6. T by tlang on 27 Dec 2020, edited 27 Dec 2020 # +1 votes

    I've added OpenDreamKit as example of Horizon 2020 funding open source software tools under category Research Infrastructure, which I found through a LinkedIn post by @c4rlosdias regarding: https://github.com/K3D-tools/K3D-jupyter

  7. D by duncan on 28 Dec 2020 # +1 votes
  8. M by Moult on 30 Dec 2020 # +6 votes

    In the interests of transparency, we were recently approached by a charity fund who wanted to donate 1,000USD to the BlenderBIM Add-on. However, they had a specific requirement: the receiving organisation had to be a 501(c), and they had to transfer it before the end of 2020. For these two reasons, Thomas and I quickly set up an OpenCollective account (which is 501(c), and offers automatic approval based on Github stars). We successfully received the 1,000USD (with a 10% fee): https://opencollective.com/opensourcebim

    This was literally set up to meet this one particular scenario, so nothing is set it stone just yet.

  9. B by bitacovir on 1 Jan 2021 # +1 votes

    @Moult said:

    In the interests of transparency, we were recently approached by a charity fund who wanted to donate 1,000USD to the BlenderBIM Add-on.

    Well, one thing is clear. There won't be much problems to get some money in the future. People are so interested in an open source solution in AEC, that they don't have problem on bringing money on the table for early projects, even with informal organization. :)

  10. A by ar_lav on 5 Jan 2021 #

    Hello all,

    For Horizon 2021, clear research and/or innovation targets are needed, and in many cases 3 different entities in three different countries to collaborate. There are of course other research funding possibilities, but the field is so vast, it would need a lot of focus and coordination to have a successful bid in.

  11. D by duncan on 6 Jan 2021, edited 6 Jan 2021 #

    @ar_lav sure, it's not easy. But then it doesn't have to be us who get the money. We can just help groups find each other who have the same goals as us. For example, buildingSMART Denmark, Danish Facility Management Association & Danish Association of Housing Cooperatives. Great project possibilities for strengthening OpenBIM in FM... (that's not a totally off the top of my head suggestion)

    @bitacovir I just spoke to someone that some years ago had their installer open paypal donation dialogue. They had to shut it down because they couldn't use all the money EUR30.000 ... they're still using that money many years later.

  12. C by CadGiru on 8 Jan 2021, edited 8 Jan 2021 #

    @duncan , regarding funding sources in Norway, believe Statsbygg is a good prospect. Statsbygg is the Norwegian government’s building commissioner, property manager and developer. They also advise the government in construction and property affairs.

    Another probable source, Forsvarsbygg NDEA. The Norwegian Defence Estates Agency is a government administrative agency under the Ministry of Defence. They develop, build, operate and divest real estate for the defence sector.

    Yet another, OBOS.

    Norway’s largest housing developer. OBOS’ vision is to build the society of the future and, in doing so, fulfil housing dreams.

  13. D by duncan on 8 Jan 2021 #

    @CadGiru i guess they fall under the banner of 'partnering'. I've spoken to @condur about his as he has contacts inside Statsbygg. I think definitely there are possibilities there for partnering. What kind of collaboration do you think there could be?

  14. D by duncan on 9 Jan 2021 # +4 votes

    I've been thinking a bit about the structure of our organization. I'm thinking that a way to do it would be to have three aspects:

    • Individual members

    • Corporate members

    • Project members

    Individual members could be anyone willing to put their name to some kind of charter

    Corporate members could be the same but with a tiered economic contribution

    Project members could be software projects who have fulfilled some requirements and are 'approved' in some way as being healthy, mature and high quality projects.

    There should of course also be some kind of incubator for projects that are looking promising and want to be active in our community.

    OSGeo has some interesting resources and requirements about having a healthy community around a project: https://www.osgeo.org/about/committees/incubation/

    Drawing from these ideas I think it would be great if we began talking with and about project and companies who want to be founding members. Together with them we could begin making a corporate charter.

    Potential corporate members:

    Potential project members. Together with them we could begin making a project charter.

    • LibreCAD

    • Blender (with specific Add-ons)

    • Speckle

    • Sverchok

    • Topologic

    • IfcOpenShell

    • Code_Aster

    Potential incubator projects

    • FreeCAD

    • BlenderBIM Add.on

    • ... many others

    ... you get the idea, let's not get sidetracked by discussing who should and shouldn't be on that list. My point is that in this way we can start with a strong but realistic base.

    Thoughts?

  15. D by DADA_universe on 9 Jan 2021 #

    A thought that came to me during today's meetup, but not fast enough for me to mention it, is a way to use LibrePay by having developers for different Floss projects signed up on an OSArch team on LibrePay so any payment made to that team account is divided up equally between all members. OSArch could have a process for voting projects / developers to join the team. So if the team account gets $300 each month and there are 10 members, each member will get $30 each month. Of course there will be conditions for being nominated / voted to join the OSArch Dev team (project must be FLOSS, must be relevant to OSArch objectives, must be actively under development - publicly accessible repo with minimum of 6 months of active and current updates, etc). The nomination / voting process just becomes one of the ways of participating in OSArch, just like the voting process we've had for logos, and also a way of appreciating developers who are contributing useful tools to the ecosystem. Long term, it can help drive OSArch tools for interoperability between FlOSS BIM tools.

  16. T by theoryshaw on 9 Jan 2021 #

    I like that idea.

    I would, however, avoid disturbing equally among the team. As is typical in an OS project, contributions usually following some type of long tail distribution. That is, only a few people contribute the most, whereby a large swath of people submit less.

    In this light, I would suggest disturbing funds based on merit, whereby merit is determined by community vote.

    I would even say, community vote is weighted. That is, some members have a higher voting potency than others.

    Voting potency could be determined quarterly or bi-yearly, whereby we have elections in which all the electorate's vote is weighted equally.

    2 cents.

  17. M by Moult on 10 Jan 2021 #
  18. D by DADA_universe on 10 Jan 2021 #

    On the long tail issue, my thinking is that we have one key developer for each of the different projects that interest OSArch voted to the team. The team can be re-composed every 12 months, so projects that stopped being actively developed in the previous cycle of 12 months can get offloaded during the next voting round for example.

    "Team" in this instance by the way, refers to the LiberaPay 's Teams feature which does have some limitations.

    On voting, I do think each vote should have the same weight, but maybe with pre qualification requirements for a member to be able to vote to prevent a swarm of new memberships just to get a project voted. Either that, or there is a nomination process that is not through voting, so each project / developer put forward for voting has already gone through pre-qualification and is already fit enough for OSArch support anyway.

    Thinking about it again however, the idea of voting for projects for OSArch to support for each year does not have to be tied to LiberaPay, so I guess my little brain wave yesterday does not bring much that's new to the table!

  19. D by DADA_universe on 10 Jan 2021 # +2 votes

    @duncan said:

    I've been thinking a bit about the structure of our organization. I'm thinking that a way to do it would be to have three aspects:

    • Individual members
    • Corporate members
    • Project members

    Great idea.

    I tried to make a couple of suggestions but each time went back to read and saw you had those things covered already, this has good legs.

  20. D by duncan on 10 Jan 2021 #
  21. J by Jesusbill on 11 Jan 2021, edited 11 Jan 2021 # +1 votes

    @duncan I also think that your proposal is very solid and I am in favour.

    And as Aether Engineering we are happy to be in the founding corporate members with a reasonable economic contribution. We are heavy users of open-source tools so we will have only benefits from any actions that accelerate and facilitate their development. We are also planning to have code contributions and possibly some internal funding to spend for specific open-source developments that will serve for our internal workflows

    Edit: OSArch should be able to provide an invoice/receipt for "tax exemption" reasons

  22. B by bernd on 11 Jan 2021, edited 11 Jan 2021 # +3 votes

    stumbled on this.

    @Moult said:

    Right now, IfcOpenShell has a bus factor of 1-2. The BlenderBIM Add-on has a bus factor of 1. FreeCAD is much more mature, having a bus factor of maybe 15 (guessing here - could be totally wrong - in the past month, 23 authors contributed, but not all authors are core devs).

    unfortunatly I need to correct the bus factor of FreeCAD. There are dozens of developers and even a few core developers, but only one of the main developer is capable of doing merges in the core system of FreeCAD including all the circumstances which have to be taken into account on such a merge. All others do not have the overview about the whole story of FreeCAD core system. May be if we would count all other cores and main dev together they could count as just another 1. Means we have a bus factor of 1-2 in FreeCAD too. That is one of the main reason we have not seen a 0.19 release so far.

    bernd

    Just to write some good news too. The bus factor of bimtster has been rised about 100% from 1 to 2 :-)

  23. T by theoryshaw on 20 Jan 2021 # +1 votes

    Per Open Collective's acceptance criteria here, it doesn't necessary seem like you need 100stars on a repo. There's other measures, it seems, they accept applications. Some of which we already possess.

    Regardless, I'm going try a social media campaign to try and get 100stars on the following gitlab repo.

    https://gitlab.com/osarch/FreeMVD_WorkFlow

    If you can, please stop by and star the repo.

    Thanks Much, Ryan

  24. T by theoryshaw on 20 Jan 2021 #
  25. S by stephen_l on 22 Jan 2021 #

    Freecad may be a good one with more than 8.5k stars

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