Board/Minutes/2020-04
Location: Video room https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/ror-nt7-6tu (URL has changed)
using BigBlueButton.
See #2020/Res18 Switch from audio-only Mumble to video chat for meetings. Additional information: [1].
Date and time: Friday, 17th of April 2020 at 17:00 London time - Countdown
Participants
Board members
- Allan Mustard (chairing)
- Paul Norman
- Rory McCann
- Guillaume Rischard
- Joost Schouppe
- Tobias Knerr
- Mikel Maron (joined approximately 5' after start)
Guests
- ~ 32 guests
Open to all OSMF members.
Guests are welcome to speak at the end of the meeting on the topics that have been discussed.
Not Present
Administrative
Previous minutes
- Board/Minutes/2020-02 Accepted
Circular Resolutions
Board_Rules_of_Order#7._Circular_Resolutions
2020/Res14 Bond proposal
| Background by Treasurer: We agree that we want to put some cash away, and keep at most £250k, which is Michelle's insurance limit, in cash. The question is where to place the cursor. Bank bonds have guaranteed returns, and are safer than having I think it'd be safe to have at least one year of outgoings on our current account, and have the rest squirreled away staggered by three months. Our outgoings are about £100k per year for regular stuff, and then SOTM you could say we’re another £100k, though as they are mostly geared to ticket sales you don't really need keep all of that to hand This is just a proposal, which I'm happy to amend based on your comments, and might of course need to be slightly adapted to match currency exchange fees and the reality of what our bank(s) can offer. |
Proposal
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Not passed 2020-03-12 with 1 vote in favour: Guillaume Rischard |
The proposal was kind of superseded by recent Barclays news (they no longer want to bank with us, so we are searching for a new bank). However the board might want to do something similar after arranging the new bank.
2020/Res15 Face to face meeting
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In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, having a face to face meeting in London seems like a bad idea. We will instead try to hold a digital version of this meeting at the same time. We will try to recuperate sunk costs.
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Accepted 2020-03-17 with 6 votes in favour: Joost Schouppe (I originally hoped to still make it myself, but this is out of the question now), Paul Norman, Guillaume Rischard, Tobias Knerr, Mikel Maron, Rory McCann (I am not sure what the exact proposal is. I am still willing to go to London, but I understand not all would be. For those who aren't there, a digital link up is required, and not terribly difficult to do). |
2020/Res16 Start the Microgrants Committee
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From the candidates we received to run the Microgrants Committee, we will ask the following people to form the Committee: Geoffrey Kateregga We will inform them that there were several more volunteers for this job. The Committee can decide together if and how to get their help. We will ask the non-selected people if it is OK to share their information with the selected people. |
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Accepted 2020-03-24 with 6 votes in favour: Tobias Knerr, Mikel Maron, Guillaume Rischard, Joost Schouppe, Allan Mustard, Rory McCann |
2020/Res17 Approve accountant quote
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Hire Chater Allan to prepare our statutory accounts, make the assessment of Corporation Tax and file our accounts with Companies House. Michelle Heydon (accountant) writes: Chater Allan prepare our statutory accounts, make the assessment of Corporation Tax and file our accounts with Companies House. The accounts are required to be filed by 30/09/2020. The charge last year was £1200.00 incl VAT. I recommended them to Frederik*, as I also use them for another Co. I would like to work with them again this year. |
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Unanimously accepted on 2020-04-10 with 7 votes in favour: Guillaume Rischard, Tobias Knerr, Mikel Maron, Allan Mustard, Joost Schouppe, Rory McCann, Paul Norman. |
* Frederik Ramm - Previous OSMF Treasurer
2020/Res18 Switch from audio-only Mumble to video chat for meetings
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After the success of the screen2screen board retreat, we propose to try and switch our monthly meetings from voice only (Mumble) to video conference type meetings. We have done a successful test run with BigBlueButton* and suggest to try this out for the next meeting. We will inform the membership and set up a public test meeting to smoothen the transition |
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Unanimously accepted on 2020-04-12 with 7 votes in favour: Rory McCann, Paul Norman, Allan Mustard, Guillaume Rischard, Joost Schouppe, Tobias Knerr, Mikel Maron. |
- Licence: GNU Lesser General Public License
- Hosted instance: Externally hosted by Collective68
Previous action items
The list is sortable, collapsible and contains items that did not arise from board meetings. Incomplete.
Items in blue are either new or have updates.
| Name | Date | Action item and status | Source | Related to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| |
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# Done |
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# Done |
||||
| Allan | 2020-03 | to reach out to FOSS community for expertise/experience in software governance | S2S 2020 | "Taking stock of governance and identifying areas for improvement" |
| Guillaume | 2020-03 | to ask opinions from AB members on his suggested attribution solution (attribution always on and collapses) | S2S 2020 | "Attribution" |
| Guillaume/Allan | 2020-03 | to move forward on proposal / scope out fundraising structure | S2S 2020 | Finance |
| Guillaume | 2020-03 | to ping MWG/self-ping about status on membership prerequisites and transparency | S2S 2020 | "Taking stock of governance and identifying areas for improvement. Section: Enforcement of policies etc" |
# Done |
||||
| Guillaume (Taken up 2020-02. Previously: Board) | 2019-07 | to decide on next steps regarding an email service for OSMF. # Guillaume is looking into it (2020-02). An added difficulty is the documents hosted by Working Groups on Google drive. |
FOSS policy | |
| Joost |
2019-10-16 | to work on a running document regarding Facebook attribution. | Meeting | |
| Joost |
2018-12-28 | to process the OpenStreetMap Uganda Local Chapter application. # In progress. |
Local Chapters | |
| Joost |
2019-07-23 | to process the FreeMap Slovakia Local Chapter application. # In progress. |
Local Chapters | |
| Joost |
2019-08-23 | to process the OSGeo Oceania Local Chapter application. # In progress. |
Local Chapters | |
| Joost |
2019-09-19 | to process the OpenStreetMap RDC Local Chapter application. # In progress. |
Local Chapters | |
| Joost | 2020-01-20 | to process the Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova Local Chapter application. # In progress. |
Local Chapters | |
| Joost | 2020-03 | to ask LCC WG for timeline on their outreach | S2S 2020 | LCCWG - "Taking stock of governance and identifying areas for improvement. Section: Better understanding and community disposition on board" |
| Joost | 2020-03 | to follow up on hiring policy | S2S 2020 | "Hiring" |
| Joost (Taken up 2020-02) | to follow up on the OpenStreetCam domain | LWG | ||
| Joost (Taken up 2020-02) | # Related talk@ discussion The decision seems to be (2019-10) to work on a running document (questions/opportunities/decisions to be made) and contact Facebook afterwards with a list of questions. |
LWG | ||
| 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. |
meeting | Activism | |
| 2018-09 | # Decision on 2020-02-27: the action item will be removed |
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| 2019-05-18 | to write Administrative Assistant's job description. # Possibly completed. |
F2F 2019 | Admin. Assistant | |
| 2018-12-20 | to write to the Data Working Group to see if there's anything further the board can do to support them. | meeting | DWG | |
| 2018-09 | # Decision on 2020-02-27: the action item will be removed |
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| 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. | meeting | OWG | |
| 2018-01-18 | to update the etiquette and add a reporting plan. | meeting | Communication | |
# Done |
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| Mikel | 2020-03 | to share key points of discussion on trust and safety for community and get feedback from Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee and ask for next steps and recommendations | S2S 2020 | "Taking stock of governance and identifying areas for improvement. Section: Trust and safety for community." |
| Mikel with help of Allan, Joost, Tobias | 2020-03 |
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S2S 2020 | "Hiring" |
# Done |
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| Mikel | 2020-03 | to talk to Tom at Mapbox about Guillaume’s suggested attribution solution (attribution always on and collapses). | S2S 2020 | "Attribution" |
| Mikel | 2020-01-30 | to draft proposed changes to board rules of order and go back to the board. | meeting | Rules of order |
| Mikel (Taken up 2020-02) |
2019-05-18 | to complete and share job description for someone to prepare a pull request for acceptance against the current “openstreetmap-website” code that will implement these changes (related blogpost).
# Mikel plans (2020-02) to circulate to people in Ruby community |
F2F 2019 | GDPR |
# Done |
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| Mikel/Joost | 2019-05-18 | to document working group practices, draft WG “rules of order"
# 2020-02 Mikel has some suggestions for draft board Rules of Order changes that he will circulate when ready. |
F2F 2019 | WGs |
| to decide about registration at the Benevity Causes Portal # Email sent to Benevity (2020-02-26) by Mikel. No reply and issue was closed. |
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| Paul | 2020-03 | to find cases where things in OWG get done manually | S2S 2020 | "Dialogue with OSM System Administrators" |
| Paul | 2020-03 | to share key points of discussion on trust and safety for community and get feedback from DWG, mailing list moderators, help.osm.org | S2S 2020 | "Taking stock of governance and identifying areas for improvement. Section: Trust and safety for community" |
| Paul | 2019-06-19 | # The plan won't be changed for the time being. |
meeting | Surveys |
| Paul | 2018-05 | to take feedback from the pre-F2F 2019 survey to developers that is about software. # Might have been completed. |
F2F 2019 | Survey |
| Paul | 2018-04-19 | to document the evaluation process of software and services used by the OSMF. | meeting | 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 |
meeting | FOSS policy |
| Rory | 2020-03 | to announce and then do gentle, friendly, first warnings, formal reminders noting exceptions and suggesting alternative actions (Ideally include “escalation path” guidelines and learn from Guillaume’s efforts). | S2S 2020 | "Taking stock of governance and identifying areas for improvement. Section: Enforcement of policies etc" |
| Tobias | 2020-03 | to keep the takeover/AoA change topic moving | S2S 2020 | "Taking stock of governance and identifying areas for improvement. Section: Enforcement of policies etc" |
| Tobias | 2020-03 | to share key points of discussion on trust and safety for community and get feedback from Forum moderators, Wiki Admins | S2S 2020 | "Taking stock of governance and identifying areas for improvement. Section: Trust and safety for community" |
Treasurer's report
| Update on bank search. |
| Guillaume |
After nine banks, we've got an agreement with Triodos, UK.
Microgrants update
Providing microgrants was a topic discussed extensively during the 2018 Face-to-Face board meeting, where a plan was developed. You might know similar programs from e.g. OSM-US, HOT or FOSSGIS. As a start and as a first trial we want to make a time-bound program where you can apply for microgrants until a specific date. A consultation document was shared in 2018 with the membership and the Advisory Board members, which contained an outline and top questions. There were also two microgrant-related sessions at the State of the Map 2018 conference (read some discussion points and questions). Work on Microgrants was paused in 2018 and restarted after the 2019 F2F meeting. Related board discussions/decisions:
Related osmf-talk discussions:
Related board working sessions: 2019 Aug & Oct, 2018 Jul & Sep. |
| Mikel |
- Weekly meetings of committee.
- Draft on wiki.
- Blogpost to be published. (#Post-meeting addition: blogpost)
- Entry ready for weeklyOSM.
Conflict of Interest policy
| See conflict of interest (CoI) policy proposal. |
| Mikel |
- Motion to adopt the COI policy proposal.
- Discussion about recusal from visibility section.
- Suggestion that all conflicts to require recusal.
COI policy and Working Groups
Points mentioned during discussion
- At later stage reach out to WG to see how it could adapt for their purposes.
- Different considerations and legal requirements.
- Not all WGs have formal votes.
Decision
Unanimous decision to postpone vote to next meeting. #Post-meeting addition: Superseded by Circular Resolution
DISC report
| The Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee (DISC) was appointed by the OSMF Board in Jan 2020 to address diversity and inclusion in the OSM community and Foundation. |
| Mikel |
Meetings:
- 2 in February on same day due to different timezones
- 1 in April
- Small revisions, based on community feedback.
- Will be forwarded to the board for decision on adopting the changes.
- Discussions about goals and what is feasible for the group.
Next steps
- Summarise existing research.
- Community consultations.
On diversity and inclusion research
- The group had direct contact with some researchers.
- Maggie Cawley to organise resources on OSM wiki.
- Heather Leson offered input from IFRC community consultations.
- Series of calls in different timezones and languages.
- Specific topics and questions.
- Person analysing discussions and drawing conclusions on root causes and potential solutions.
On doing quantitative research (question by Tobias)
- The group will probably not do quantitative research.
- The group might do some demographic analysis on Foundation's membership.
On group's governance structure
- Rory will work on that.
- Currently using email list.
Suggestion to contact science mailing list (Joost).
Update on LWG's rewrite of attribution policy
| The Licensing Working Group (LWG) has written an a draft attribution guideline.
Attribution related board minutes:
Attribution guidance related LWG minutes:
OSMF members related discussions: |
| Guillaume |
Currently the issue is on board's hands.
Action item: Guillaume to contact stakeholders.
| The board had received a request (2019-07) from the Licencing Working Group (LWG) to contact Telenav about the transfer of the openstreetcam.org domain to the OSMF, or at least enter an agreement in which the domain and any other rights to the name are transferred to the OSMF in the case that the current scope of the OSC project significantly changes from contributing to OSM. 2019-12 The project was transferred from Telenav to Grab (Gold OSMF Corporate Member). |
| Joost |
They will probably change the name of the product to an acceptable name but might like to keep the domain name.
Action item: Joost to have a phone call with them.
Update on tile server overload
Overloaded tile cache servers have caused degraded user experience on osm.org and other tools and sites which rely on our tile service. The OWG and sysadmins have been taking steps to fix the issue, including:
|
| Paul |
- Load reduced as some heavy users that have no relationship to OSM (such as commercial apps/websites) had their access restricted.
- Added cache servers - doubled capacity in US with servers owned by OSMF.
- Updated tile usage policy to reduce cases of contacting the OWG.
- Added definitions of bulk downloads.
- Clarified some communication channels used.
Growth rate for tile usage
- 3% month on month (15% year on year)
Other points mentioned during discussion
- Possible sponsorship from Fastly.
- Geocoding usage growing as well.
- Some community members in Germany mention that tile loading is still slow for them. They could help to try debug the issue.
- The board has to think how to deal with this in the longer tem.
Decision: Topic to be added to May meeting.
Trust and safety
| The topic was called "Enforcement of Code of Etiquette". Our etiquette guidelines are at: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Etiquette
Related board discussions:
|
| Mikel |
Action item from board's screen-to-screen meeting was to compile a list of questions to pose to the people who are administrators or moderators position on many different OSM communication channels.
- Getting a comprehensive sense of what views in the community and making sure that everyone who has a stake in OSM is heard.
- Proliferation of different channels.
- People not being comfortable posting on some channels.
- List of questions compiled. Sample of questions:
- How are the channels managed?
- What are their thoughts about the etiquette guidelines that we have in place.
- Communication channel outreach divided among board members.
- Started getting responses.
Plan:
- Synthesize responses.
- Come up with next steps.
OSM US update
| Initial interest has been expressed before 2017 in a Local Chapter application from the US, as OpenStreetMap US has been operating for nearly 10 years and would like to see the organisation become an official Local Chapter. Communications restarted after the new OSM US was elected in 2019. The OSMF board discussed during the 2019 F2F meeting the questions received and there were in-person meetings of members of both boards during the State of the Map 2019 conference. As a first step forward, the board proposed that OSM US draft an addendum to the local chapter agreement.
The received proposed draft addendum is here. The board has talked about inserting clarification regarding trademark to addendum. Related board discussion: 2019-11 |
| Guillaume |
OSMF and OSM US board went over a few versions of the agreement.
- Agreement and all the points.
Suggestions for next steps
- Get feedback from lawyers on the latest version of the agreement (suggestion by Maggie Cawley, OSM US, present at the meeting)
- Consultation from OSM community and existing LC representatives as soon as possible.
- Look at different documents from applying chapter.
- Signing during online State of the Map 2020.
Update on applications for Local Chapter status
| Current applications are listed here. |
| Joost |
- Czechia - application to be signed live at a future board meeting or online event.
- Slovakia - waiting for Slovak translation of message for community consultation.
- Argentina - looking good. The Secretary had meeting with founding member of local community.
- Oceania - top down.
- Strong representation of OSM in core members.
- Suggestion to have phonecalls with core contributors and take more care in community consultation (Rory will help).
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: |
| Joost |
No updates.
Local Chapter presentation - OpenStreetMap Italia
| See: New idea: Invite a LC to speak at each OSMF Board meeting. |
- Founded in 2005.
- 300 members.
- 8 employees.
- one with main focus OSM and open data.
- the rest work across different projects.
- Having an official identity and a person working only on OSM issues was very efficient in giving a single point of contact for parties interested in OSM.
- As both Wikimedia and OSM chapter, try to make connections between two worlds and different projects.
- Thinking about locally discussing more the imports policy, which is not well understood by local community.
Activities
For 2018 see this page.
- Mapping parties.
- Dialogue with public institutions to offer open geodata and connect with OSM.
- Public services already using OSM (e.g. the 911-equivalent emergency service).
- Increase awareness about OSM with communication and events.
- In recent weeks movement about things related to Covid19 (mapping features useful in current situation) and reaching out to government.
On background of members
They do not keep track of how many of our members came from OSM, however:
- More people with neither Wikimedia or OSM background (interested in free knowledge, coming from cultural institutions).
- More people with Wikimedia background than with OSM background.
- Some people involved with both communities.
LC and Foundation
- Had discussions about delegating more tasks from Foundation to LC. LC could do more work, with some official delegation from Foundation WGs.
- LCCWG can be a powerful tool.
The LC representatives asked board members how they can help the Foundation
- More membership in the Foundation.
- More participation in the WGs, particularly the OWG and DWG.
On joined (LC and OSMF) membership'
They found it an interesting idea.
Any other business
Email from HOT about agreement on trademark use
Guillaume asked for any board member volunteers to work on that. None.
Guest comments or questions
Comment on the chat about BigBlueButton.
- Not very mobile friendly
Next meeting
Board meetings take place online once a month.
New recurring date and time: On the 3rd or 4th Thursday of the month, at 17:00 UTC.