Board/Minutes/2020-03-F2F/Sustaining and fortifying OSM

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

Draft notes.

Each board member was initially asked to list their two most urgent operational and infrastructure needs.

Discussion was then on the following:

Tile services/servers

iD

Supporting sysadmins

What is the situation

What do we need to discuss

Disposition on paid staffing

  • Paid staffing comes with risk, where does money come from?
  • Companies are willing to invest substantial amounts.
  • Concern of big donors expecting to have substantial control.
  • In terms of influence, we need to discuss and we need to tap and learn from other FLOSS communities.
  • Pursue diversified strategy, pursue other sources of money.
  • Concern about moving on this before talking to sysadmins.
  • Need a structured sense of OSM in 2-5 years from now.
  • Not just sysadmins, also seeing strain on finance side, banking, might have to move Foundation to another country, it’s a lot of work, conversation should be broader.

Action item: Scope out possible scenarios for possible paid staff, including risks.

Personnel committee

  • Structured way of working with Dorothea.
  • Concern about confidentiality /HR issues.

Action item: Scoping out boundaries on committee, safety measures, how to mitigate effects on volunteers, e.g. de-motivation.

Who to take the above action items forward: Allan, Mikel (action owner), Joost, Tobias

Scope out fundraising structure

  • Committee? Working Group?
  • Need to figure out to manage and spend money.
  • Need to do research on strategies for increasing revenue.

Action item: Guillaume and Allan to move forward on proposal.