Board/Minutes/2021-04
Date and time: Friday, 30 April 2021 14:00 UTC - Countdown
Location: Video room https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/ror-nt7-6tu
using BigBlueButton.
Participants
Board members
- Allan Mustard (Chairing)
- Eugene Alvin Villar
- Guillaume Rischard
- Jean-Marc Liotier
- Mikel Maron
- Rory McCann
- Tobias Knerr
Officers and board
Biographies
Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi
Not Present
Guests
- 9 guests
Open to all OSMF members.
You are welcome to ask questions or to comment (via voice or on the chat) at the end of the meeting.
- Please mute your microphone when you join, and to preserve bandwidth, refrain from turning on your webcam.
- If you are in a low-bandwidth environment, you may benefit from using BigBlueButton's low-bandwidth settings.
Administrative
Previous minutes
- 2021-03-26 Accepted
Circular Resolutions
2021/Res11 Authorise Allan to send attribution guideline letter to Intellectual Property lawyer
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<link to online document> is the letter, approved by Dermot*. |
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Accepted on 2021-03-26 with 5 votes in favour: Eugene Alvin Villar, Jean-Marc Liotier, Tobias Knerr, Allan Mustard, Guillaume Rischard. |
| Circular by Guillaume Rischard. |
* Dermot McNally - Licensing Working Group member.
** Board conflict of interest policy.
2021/Res12 Tweak to Local Chapters agreement improve ability to upgrade
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This proposal is to insert the follow 2 subsections into §10 of the Local Chapters Agreement (LCA), making it v2.1 of the LCA. > 10.1 This agreement immediately terminates any previous Local Chapter Agreement between the Foundation and the Chapter. > 10.2 This agreement will be terminated immediately if both parties agree in writing. The old subsections 10.1 → 10.4 will be renumbered (to 10.3→10.6). If you think this change needs more discussion, or more non-Board advice, please vote "Disagree" and state this vote box |
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Accepted on 2021-03-27 with 5 votes in favour: Eugene Alvin Villar (I agree, but is it possible to add the proposed 10.1 clause if and only if there is an existing agreement? So for new chapters from now on, this clause will be omitted.), Mikel Maron (agree and also think Guillaume's suggestions make sense), Tobias Knerr (I would support further tweaks as suggested by Guillaume),Allan Mustard, Rory McCann. |
| Circular by Rory McCann. |
2021/Res13 Approve Dorothea's new contract
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Agreed contract at https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/3/39/Contract_Dorothea_202103.odt * |
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Unanimously accepted on 2021-03-29 with 7 votes in favour: Jean-Marc Liotier, Eugene Alvin Villar, Allan Mustard, Rory McCann, Tobias Knerr, Guillaume Rischard, Mikel Maron. |
| Circular by Mikel Maron. |
* .odt file size: 1.07 MB
Related:
- 2020-10-22 Closed session: Discussing the suggested new contract for Dorothea, as worked out by TimeLessTime
- 2020-10-16 Circular resolution: 2020/Res 50 Accept the proposed new contract for Dorothea
2021/Res14 Approve trademark agreement with OpenHistoricalMap
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Agreement attached* (with details on marks) |
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Accepted on 2021-03-30 with 6 votes in favour: Jean-Marc Liotier, Eugene Alvin Villar, Rory McCann (The LWG has recommended the board accept this, that's good enough for me), Tobias Knerr, Allan Mustard, Mikel Maron |
| Circular by Mikel Maron. |
* Decision to publish the agreement delegated by the board to the Licensing Working Group. File: 64 KB, 5 pages, .pdf
Related Licensing Working Group minutes:
- 2021 Jan, Feb, Mar
- 2020 Dec OpenHistoricalMap vs OpenHistoryMap trademark issues
2021/Res15 Empower Rory McCann to sign new Local Chapters Agreement with all existing Local Chapters
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Rory McCann is to offer the LCA v2.1, the result of the circular resolution to all existing Local Chapters which will then 'upgrade them' to v2.1 of the Local Chapter Agreement. |
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Unanimously accepted on 2021-03-30 with 7 votes in favour: Tobias Knerr, Eugene Alvin Villar, Jean-Marc Liotier, Mikel Maron (Not sure this is strictly necessary, should be covered by previous decisions. But no objection in any case), Allan Mustard, Guillaume Rischard, Rory McCann (This will clean everything up, so that all LCs are on the same contract). |
| Circular by Rory McCann. |
2021/Res16 Approve active contributor membership application 2021030210000058
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The Board currently decides on active contributor membership applications based on non-mapping contributions on a case-by-case basis. |
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Accepted on 2021-04-07 with 5 votes in favour: Eugene Alvin Villar, Allan Mustard, Tobias Knerr, Mikel Maron, Rory McCann (They appear to meet the standard for Active Contributor Membership. I would prefer if the * 'contact us' page didn't use Google Maps). |
* Redacted name of organisation.
** Redacted OSM username.
2021/Res17 BigBlueButton renewal contract
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Our BBB* instance from Cloud68 is up for renewal at end of April 2021. They recommend the Medium Plan (€99/month) for us based on what our needs have been over the last year when we were on the initial €39/month plan. What should we do? Should we sign up now, or continue discussing it? |
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Voting period closed on 2021-04-19 with 5 votes in favour to "Sign up for the Medium plan (€99/month)": Rory McCann, Eugene Alvin Villar, Tobias Knerr, Allan Mustard, Jean-Marc Liotier (Makes sense in pandemic times, especially if we promote usage of our BBB instance to local chapters). |
| Circular by Rory McCann. |
* BigBlueButton instance: https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/ used by the OSMF board, some working groups and community members for video meetings. Community members are welcome to create accounts and use it for OSM meetings.
Previous action items
See Board/Action_Items.
Reportage
Takeover protection
We have to make sure to investigate the issue of requiring voters to be "free to vote", and to consider if there should be a change to the Articles of Association, as instructed by the membership (2020 General Meeting resolution - vote 4).
Treasurer's report
Presented by Guillaume Rischard (Treasurer).
Wise
| Background |
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| Wise (formerly Transferwise) is a financial technology company (not a bank) that the OSMF uses to receive/send some payments. The OSMF bank is Triodos, which we don't use for all transactions, as it has high fees. |
- Wise has asked us if we have relationships with a list of countries (which were not mentioned in their acceptable use policy when we signed up with Wise.
- We do have a couple of associate membersin the two Congos, Iran, Afghanistan. (Associate Members are NOT members as mentioned in the UK Companies Act).
- Only some of those members have paid the membership fee, as the rest have been accepted via the active membership program.
- The membership fees of those members were not paid via Transferwise but via Paypal.
- The countries above are not mentioned in the acceptable usage policy of Wise.
- Wise
- told us they consider us in violation of their acceptable use policy, but not specified which part.
- blocked our account and credit card (for paying Deepl, AWS, etc).
We have emailed Wise asking:
- if we can appeal the decision and
- if we can terminate the memberships of the people in those countries.
Suggestions
- For immediate payment needs, talk to Local Chapters/HOT/other organisations and transfer money to them.
- Create subsidiary/move to EU. Guillaume had suggested registering a subsidiary in Luxembourg, as he has familiarity. Suggestion for mid-month topic.
- Can ask HOT which bank they use.
- We could move money from Wise to Triodos bank, with charges for changing the currency.
- Form a budget committee.
- Email the membership to make them aware of possible disruptions to membership payments. # Comment: Not necessary right now, as the issue might be resolved in a week.
Triodos
- We still have Triodos bank, but they have high fees (EUR25/transfer).
- We have UK bank account number but not IBAN. The money gets transferred to their bank account and the transaction must have our UK bank account number as the reference.
- Triodos currency: GBP only (they don't do other currencies).
- We don't have a debit card with Triodos.
On creating a subsidiary in Luxembourg
- Entity registration as a non-profit is fast, has a small fee.
- Opening bank account takes a few days.
Paypal
- Paypal can't send money to a bank account.
- Treasurer is uncomfortable to have high amounts on Paypal.
- Transferring from/to Paypal has charges.
Action items:
- Guillaume to appeal the Wise decision.
- Guillaume to notify the Membership Working Group
- Guillaume to ask if we can get a debit card with Triodos.
- Guillaume with Jean-Marc, Eugene and Rory to remove all mentions of Wise/Transferwise from the OSMF website and the OSM wiki.
Decisions:
- Pay with Triodos bank account at the moment.
- Addition of topic to the mid-month board chat.
Other point mentioned: Public pressure would probably hurt right now.
Engineering Working Group
| Background |
|---|
| Paul Norman (EWG, OWG) had gathered some people who want to draft a scope for a restarted Engineering Working Group and propose it to the board. The first meeting was on 2021-04-02 and an email summary was sent afterwards to the board (see below),
Participants of first meeting: Rob Savoye, Roland Olbricht, Tobias Knerr, Adam Hoyle and Paul Norman.
The team would explicitly like to put maintenance to improve developer experience (tech debt), developer documentation, and other work that does not result in new features. They have work to do around defining classes of software (core, non-core, or other terms) and what they want to focus on and will be working on this, then discussing it at a meeting next week. |
| Suggested and presented by Tobias Knerr. |
Plan for restarting the Engineering Working Group (EWG) will be ready by the mid-month board meeting.
On the Engineering Working Group budget:
- EWG wants to start at relatively small scale, similar with the Microgrants budget last year. # Treasurer's comment that this would be fine.
- No full time positions to be funded initially.
Draft Attribution Guidelines
| Background |
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The Licensing Working Group (LWG) had created a draft attribution guideline , which was subsequently modified by the board. After meetings of the board with Corporate Member representatives on attribution (Jun and Oct 2020) and with LWG members (Oct 2020), the board version was modified. December meeting decisions to:
The board received an answer from Kyle Mitchell (Intellectual Property lawyer suggested by Allen Gunn), who was contacted to provide external legal advice on the draft attribution guidelines. The initial email was approved by Dermot McNally (Licensing Working Group) and included the current draft of the attribution guidelines and a list of questions. Related: Circular 2021/Res11: Authorise Allan to send attribution guideline letter to Intellectual Property lawyer. Attribution related meetings, excluding recurring board and LWG meetings
Attribution related board minutes
Attribution guidance related LWG minutes
OSMF members related discussions: |
| Suggested and presented by Tobias Knerr. |
Tobias has produced a slightly updated draft that could be sent to the Licensing Working Group (LWG), along with an offer to have a board-LWG meeting, to resolve the final questions of the "gap list" document (which lists what the LWG and the board consider as open issues on the board version of the draft attribution guidelines).
There were 5 points from LWG on the "gap list" document.
- 2-3 of the points were directly addressed with changes by the board.
- 1-2 of the points were in no need for changes.
No decision taken about what to do in case of disagreement.
Action item: Tobias to draft message to LWG, to be reviewed by the board next week.
Delegation of local chapter presentation scheduling
| Background |
|---|
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Related to the scheduling of monthly Local Chapter presentations during the monthly OSMF Board meetings. |
| Suggested by Tobias Knerr. Presented by Rory McCann |
- Sometimes there are no replies to emails by the Secretary to Local Chapters, suggesting presentations.
- Waiting for 2 weeks for a reply has the disadvantage that if the suggestion is then made to another Local Chapter, they only have 2 weeks to accept and prepare the presentation.
Suggestions
- Expand the scope and have presentations from local groups and invited individuals (e.g. JOSM developers).
- Get the Local Chapters and Communities Working Group and/or the Advisory Board involved.
- Public call.
Mikel Maron and Eugene Alvin Villar offered to help with organisation.
Advisory Board - monthly update
| Background |
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| The Advisory Board members are separate from the OSMF board of directors - individuals are either nominated by Local Chapters and Gold or higher 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 of board communications with representatives on the Advisory Board.
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| Presented by Rory McCann |
- The board will have a meeting with the Advisory Board in a month.
- Representatives of new Local Chapters added to the advisory board:
- Andrzej Kępys (Stowarzyszenie OpenStreetMap Polska)
- Peter Vojtek (Freemap Slovakia)
- Satoshi IIDA / 飯田 哲 (般社団法人オープンストリートマップ・ファウンデーション・ ジャパン (OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan))
Current Advisory Board members listed here.
Any other business
Microgrants
| Background |
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| The pilot run of the Microgrant program in 2020 funded OpenStreetMap community members, individuals, groups and organisations contributing to OpenStreetMap - to organize projects throughout the year. Initially, the program was set to fund with a budget of up to 5000 Euros per project and for a maximum of 50.000 Euros. All the proposals (funded or not) are visible on the OSM wiki. The program is being overseen by the Microgrants committee. The 12 selected proposals are presented here.
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 the board wanted 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 face-to-face board meeting. Related board discussions/decisions:
Related osmf-talk discussions:
Related board working sessions: 2019 Aug & Oct, 2018 Jul & Sep. |
Is there a report from the Microgrants committee for the first round of microgrants? (Question by Eugene Alvin Villar)
> Allan has requested an evaluation from the Microgrants committee but the report has not been received yet.
Is there going to be a second round of Microgrants this year? (Eugene Alvin Villar)
> Depends on the Microgrants committee report.
> Board members may wish to help the Microgrants committee by reaching out to beneficiaries of microgrants and encouraging them to send their reports.
BigBlueButton server
| Background |
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| BigBlueButton is an open source web video conferences and chat system. OSMF has a BigBlueButton instance (https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/) hosted by Cloud68 and available to community members for OSM meetings.
Related
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Comments by Rory McCann.
- Cloud68 payment pending.
- Cloud68 have added two features that have been requested to the BigBlueButton instance.
- Rooms do not need to be opened by their creator for meetings.
- The audio notifications about muting status have been removed.
Guest comments or questions
No comments or questions.
Open to all OSMF members.
You are welcome to ask questions or to comment (via voice or on the chat) at the end of the meeting.
- Please mute your microphone when you join, and to preserve bandwidth, refrain from turning on your webcam.
- If you are in a low-bandwidth environment, you may benefit from using BigBlueButton's low-bandwidth settings.
Next meeting
- Mid-month chat (closed to observers): May 14, 14:00 UTC
- Public board meeting: May 28, 14:00 UTC - Countdown
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