Board/Minutes/2019-06-19

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Location: Channel "OSMF Board of Directors (Public)" on Mumble.
Date and time: 19th of June, at 19:00 London time.
Countdown

Participants

Board members

  • Kate Chapman
  • Heather Leson
  • Tobias Knerr
  • Mikel Maron
  • Paul Norman
  • Frederik Ramm (joined ~19 mins after start)
  • Joost Schouppe

Biographies

Guests

  • 6 Guests

Open to all OSMF members.

Guests are welcome to speak at the end of the meeting on the topics that have been discussed. Please note that text messages sent on Mumble chat may not be seen by people who join using mobile apps.

Not Present

Administrative

Previous minutes

Circular Resolutions

Board_Rules_of_Order#7._Circular_Resolutions

None.

Previous action items

The list is sortable and collapsible. New items or updates are in blue.

Name Date Action item and status
Frederik 2019-02-20 to create a circular about accepting the proposed budget. Once accepted, the budget will be put up on the OSMF website.
Frederik 2018-12-20 to remind the GDPR tech. implementation call on mailing lists after the 7th of January.
# No takers in OSM. Frederik has started to slowly work on the changes - which require other changes to be implemented first, so it might be difficult for outsider to give estimate of cost required. Frederik and Heather to schedule a call and invite other interested board members (done).
Frederik 2018-09-20 to update Roland Olbricht, maintainer of the Overpass API (downstream data controller).
Heather 2018-12-20 to draft email to start off discussion on the osmf-talk mailing list about developing guidance for our involvement in politics/activism.
# Was Peter's. Assigned to Heather on 2018-12-20.
Joost 2018-06-21 to initiate discussion on the osmf-talk mailing list about refining the Local Chapter criteria.
# Suggested period for discussion: two weeks. Was Martijn's. Assigned to Heather on 2018-12-20. Transferred to Joost on 2019-04-24
Kate 2019-03-20< to follow-up with Gunner (facilitator), regarding the face-to-face board meeting.
# Done.
Kate 2018-12-20 to write to the Data Working Group to see if there's anything further the board can do to support them.
Kate 2018-02-15 to follow up with Grant about the technical workaround of having conference announcement banners on osm.org linked to landing pages on the website.
Kate 2018-01-18 to update the etiquette and add a reporting plan.
Mikel/Paul 2018-03-15 to look at the ten most active mailing lists and see if people listed as admins are active in the moderator role, what is in place, and how they manage the lists.
# 2018-05-24 Mikel drafted email and both agreed on some modifications.
Paul 2019-04-24 to contact Gunner to get the community survey about the 2019 face-to-face board meeting topics set-up.
# Done.
Paul 2018-04-19 to document the evaluation process of software and services used by the OSMF. Related to our FOSS policy.
Paul 2016-10-28 to create a page on the wiki, listing software products which are used by OSMF and are closed-source and/or are externally hosted.
# Was Peter's

Discussion about mirroring Gitlab action items of the board's repository on the monthly meeting agenda.

Local Chapters - keeping track of development and current applications

Keeping track of development

The Local Chapter Agreement lists several requirements, both for the Local Chapters, as well as for the Foundation. E.g.:
  • Article 9.1 - Each LC is required to supply a annual report to the Foundation within 18 months after a local chapter year ended.
  • Article 8.2. - Each LC is required to inform the Foundation of any planned or actual change in the by-laws, status, number of members or other important changes (article 8.2).

Discussion about:

  • FOSSGIS request for its 2019 report to be shared by the board with the membership.
  • Monitoring annual reports.
  • Notifications to board about any changes of bylaws (Recent example: OSM Italia (updated bylaws in Italian) - notification was sent to the -currently inactive- LC Working Group).

Process for initial review of bylaws: Articles of Association and translation are reviewed by board members and are included in the LC application pages for public review.

Lead: Tobias

Suggestion:

Action items:

Updates on current applications

Updates on recent Local Chapter applications.
Lead: Heather
  • Currently processing the application from Ireland.
  • OSM-US has also expressed interest in becoming a LC.

Supporting regional SotMs through the OSMF ticket sales system

Enquiry from team planning State of the Map (SotM) Africa about whether they can use the same platform that OSMF uses to sell their tickets.
  • We self-host and use CiviCRM, both to manage the membership database and SotM ticket sales.
  • With CiviCRM only paypal/credit card payments are supported. No wire-transfer support.
  • As we self host CiviCRM, attendees do not have to pay an extra fee for the ticketing platform, just the Paypal fee.

Alternative for LCs:

Update: The SotM Africa team has clarified that their issue is not technical, but that they are looking for an organisation which could handle ticket invoicing "in the name of SotM Africa". If the board agrees to manage the financial part of ticket selling, Christine Karch (SotM WG lead) volunteered for the configuration of the SotM Africa in CiviCRM.

Lead: Heather

Points to consider:

  • Financial
    • administration by their side.
    • possibility for OSMF to have to pay tax on the ticket proceeds, so they might get reduced amount.
  • Legal legitimacy.
  • Trademark use
    • # Events and conferences that will use an OSM mark (such as "OpenStreetMap" or "State of the Map") need to apply for a licence.
    • We had one such request in the past by SotM Oceania but the process was not documented.

Action items

  • Heather to follow up with SotM Africa team.
  • Mikel and Paul to document the process and the questions we need to ask.

19 mins after start: Frederik joined.

Next steps on pre-SotM survey

During the recent face-to-face meeting the board discussed about surveying the membership/community. Discussion about next steps on a pre-SotM survey.
Lead: Mikel

Meeting scheduled.

Suggestion:

  • Offer option of survey creation to Local Chapters.

Action item: Paul to switch limesurvey plan to annual, transfer ownership to OWG and billing to OSMF.

Recommendation by LWG on a future "tile-licence"

The OSMF Board had tasked the Licensing Working Group to evaluate the licence of the map tile style (cartography) for the default map at openstreetmap.org and to recommend whether it should be changed from CC BY-SA 2.0, and if so, what the new licence should be. The LWG recommends changing to CC BY 4.0 together with a waiver of the terms on restrictions due to Effective Technological Measures for downstream recipients and getting community comments before actually re-licensing.

Related LWG minutes: May 2019

Lead: Paul

Suggestion to use limesurvey to consult the community and discussion about whether surveys are an appropriate tool.

Points mentioned:

  • Not everyone is engaged in the mailing lists.
  • Surveys can be used for a few selected topics.
  • It is not the number of responses that matters, but arguments.
  • In case of surveys, every response will be read and processed just by board members instead by the whole community and we lack the humanpower.
  • If the LWG wants to do a survey, that is possible.

Suggestion:

  • The LWG could take the input from osmf-talk and try to explain the advantages and disadvantages of several options and share it with wider group.

Action item: The board will ask the LWG to consult with the community.

Asking OWG their views on Andy's infrastructure thoughts

Andy Allan has written a post on the OSMF infrastructure and the board is thinking to ask the views of the Operations Working Group (OWG) on the points mentioned. Andy was part of the OWG since before it was even called that, and in May 2019 he stepped down to concentrate on other OpenStreetMap projects.
Lead: Mikel

Paul abstained from the discussion, as he didn't want his views to be mistaken as OWG ones.

Suggestions:

  • Reach to the OWG and see if we can help.
  • Re-engage Andy to help some of his ideas happen.

Action item: Joost to update the email to the OWG # (every WG will receive an email with questions by the board), as part of the WG survey).

Advisory Board - monthly update

The Advisory Board members are separate from the OSMF board of directors - individuals are either nominated by Corporate Members of the OSMF or invited directly by the OSMF board of directors. The OSMF Board of Directors will publicly minute, in the board meeting minutes, any communication sent to, or received from, the AB members. This monthly section is reserved for this purpose. Overview.

AB related updates and board discussions:
2019 Jan, Mar

2018 Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Dec
2017 Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May (F2F), Oct

Lead: Heather
  • OSM-UK updated the Advisory Board about UK's Geospatial Commission call for evidence, which is now online and about the commission's 2019-2020 annual plan.

Any other business

Working Groups survey

Suggestion: Identifying and asking former WG members.

Decision: Joost to write about how the idea came about and what we'll do with the responses.

State of the Map 2020

How can the board support the State of the Map Working Group (SotM-WG) in getting bids for 2020? There we no bids so far.

Suggestions:

  • Forward the call to the Advisory Board.
  • Leave it to the SotM-WG.

VAT tax on SotM tickets

OSMF is not VAT registered in the UK and we have assumed we have no VAT problems. However, it seems that the rules of the country where we hold SotM apply to ticket sales.

  • We might lose 20% of income.
  • If we hold the international State of the Map conference at a country with VAT tax, we are likely to have to register for VAT in that country.
  • Tickets should mention how much VAT they contain and list the VAT ID.
  • Tickets that will be sold to businesses might have different requirements compared to those sold to individuals.
  • We can offset the VAT tax by the amount of money we spend locally.
  • We might have to file tax report for SotM2018.

Suggestion: Document the process.

Guest comments or questions

Guests are welcome to speak at the end of the meeting on the topics that have been discussed. Please note that text messages sent on Mumble chat may not be seen by people who join using mobile apps.

Comment about minutes of face-to-face meetings

Imagico commented that the Articles of Association (#93) require the board to take minutes of Face-to-Face (F2F) meetings, that it is strange to refer to decisions made during the F2F and that there are no minutes of the meeting.

Points mentioned by board members:

  • No decision that required voting or circular was made # Comment by Imagico that any decision would be minuted in a normal meeting.
  • The AoA require to take minutes but do not say that they need to be published.

Closed portion of meeting

Notes won't be added, as the administrative assistant was not present.

Administrative Assistant's contract

Dorothea's contract.

Related (closed) discussions/circular resolutions:
2019 Jan, Feb (Circular Resolution)
2018 Jan, Feb
2017 Mar , Apr

Payment for F2F 2019 facilitation

The board discussed the amount that will be offered as an honorium to the face-to-face meeting facilitator, Allen Gunn.

Next meeting

Meetings take place on the 3rd Wednesday of the month, at 19:00 London time, unless rescheduled.
The next monthly board meeting will be on the 17th of July, at 19:00 London time, unless rescheduled.

Meeting end

Acronyms