Board/Minutes/2021-06

Date and time: Friday, 25 June 14:00 UTC - Countdown

Location: Video room https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/ror-nt7-6tu
using BigBlueButton.

Acronyms

Participants

Board members

• Allan Mustard (Chairing)
• Eugene Alvin Villar
• Mikel Maron
• Amanda McCann
• Tobias Knerr

Officers and board
Biographies

Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi

Not Present

• Guillaume Rischard
• Jean-Marc Liotier

Guests

• 9 guests, including Feye Andal, who gave the presentation about OpenStreetMap Philippines.

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

• 2021-05 Approved

Circular Resolutions

• About circular resolutions
• Board conflict of interest policy

Action item updates

See Board/Action_Items.

Treasurer's report

Previous reports during monthly board meetings

• 2021 Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May
• 2019 Feb, Jun, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

Please note that additional financial-related topics have been discussed during previous board meetings.

• The Bank of Ireland has received our application to open an account there.

Approve and publish the Attribution Guidelines

Background

• 2018-11 The Licensing Working Group (LWG) starts working on a draft attribution guideline.
• 2019 LWG members solicited feedback from attendants of the State of the Map US conference and at the international State of the Map conference in Heidelberg.
• 2019-08 and 09. The August 2019 version became available to the community (osmf-talk message) and is added to the OSM wiki.
• 2020-01 The version with changes due to the feedback from the State of the Map US conference and State of the Map 2019 was made available to the board.
• 2020-02
  • The LWG updated the document based on input from the board, shared the updated version with the board and notified it that it would be starting another round of public feedback to hopefully conclude the matter.
  • The February 2020 LWG version became available to the community on the OSM wiki.
• 2020-06 The OSMF board
  • modified the draft and presented the updated version during the 2020-06 board meeting.
  • had a meeting with Corporate Member representatives on the Advisory Board on attribution.
• 2020-10 The board had meetings with Corporate Member representatives on the Advisory Board and with the LWG. The board version was subsequently modified.
• 2020-12 Board meeting decisions to:
  • Publish the current board draft after giving the Licensing Working Group (LWG) a heads up.
  • Ask LWG to summarise the points they still consider open from the comments on the board document and ask Dermot McNally (LWG member), who has no conflict of interest, to present that report at the next LWG meeting.
  • Rory McCann (Board) to work with external counsel to try to find the solutions to these issues that are most favourable to us.
• 2021-01 The LWG was working on the requested document ("gap list") summarising the points they still considered open on the board version of the attribution guidelines.
• 2021-02 The LWG sent the "gap list" document to the board.
• 2021-03 The board contacted Kyle Mitchell (Intellectual Property lawyer suggested by Allen Gunn, who has been the external facilitator of some of the past board face-to-face meetings) for external legal advice on the draft attribution guidelines. The initial email was approved by Dermot McNally (Licensing Working Group) and included the board draft of the attribution guidelines and a list of questions by the board and the LWG.
• 2021-04 Kyle Mitchell responded.
• 2021-05 The board forwards Kyle Mitchell's response to the LWG and answers regarding the "gap list" points.
• 2021-06-01 LWG and Board online discussion. Decisions and next steps here.
• 2021-06-11 Preparations for vote on Attribution Guidelines (board chat)
• 2021-06-12 Publication of current draft v0.9 and request for feedback from the community and the membership.

LWG: Attribution guidance related minutes

• 2021: Jan Attribution guidelines, Feb Attribution guidelines gap list and board status update on outside counsel, Jun Attribution Guidelines
• 2020: Jan (“Twitter attribution thread”), Feb, Mar, Apr, Jul, Aug, Oct, Nov
• 2019: Jan, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
• 2018: Dec

Board attribution guideline related minutes

• 2021: Jan Attribution guidelines update, Feb 12 (mid month board chat), Apr 09 Kyle Mitchell's response regarding attribution guidelines and ODbL, Apr 16 Attribution guidelines (dedicated chat), [[Board/Minutes/2021-05#Draft_attribution_guidelines|May]
• 2020: Jan Attribution and lack thereof, Apr Update on LWG's rewrite of attribution policy, May Status of Attribution policy, Status of Facebook attribution issue on mobile, Jun Status, Meeting with Corporate Members of the Advisory Board on attribution, Oct screen-to-screen discussion, update, Nov update 1, update 2, Dec update (informal board chat), update (public board meeting).
• 2019 Oct Attribution by Facebook.

Board attribution guideline related circular

• 2020-03-26 Circular 2021/Res11: Authorise Allan to send attribution guideline letter to Intellectual Property lawyer.

Other attribution guideline related minutes

• 2020-12-04 Board and LWG meeting (Dermot McNally) on draft attribution guidelines - The meeting was set-up in short time. The LWG was invited but only Dermot McNally could participate in such short notice.
• 2020-10-15 Board and LWG meeting on draft attribution guidelines
• 2020-10-09 Board and AB Corporate Members representatives meeting
• 2020-10-02 Session Make progress on attribution guidelines and enforcement, during board screen-to-screen October meeting
• 2020-06-22 Board and Advisory Board Corporate Member representatives meeting

OSMF members' related discussions on the osmf-talk* mailing list:

• Attribution guideline status update: 2019 Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
• Attribution: board letter to Facebook: 2019 Oct, Nov

* osmf-talk is the mailing list for OpenStreetMap Foundation members (Join the Foundation). All past messages are available here.

Suggested by Tobias Knerr.

• The current draft v0.9 of the attribution guidelines is here.

Request for feedback by community and members sent on 2021-06-12. Feedback can be provided:

• on the talk mailing list (anyone can post. Subscribe to the mailing list here).
• on the membership mailing list (you need to be an OSMF member to post but you can view all emails. Become an OSMF member here).
• directly to the board at board@osmfoundation.org (emails to the board are not limited to the board members, but may also be copied to other parties. At the time of writing this is Dorothea Kazazi, the administrative assistant).

Comments:

• Good conversation of the board with the Licensing Working Group.
• Community consultation on osmf-talk^* and talk mailing lists did not yield any fundamentally new input.

* osmf-talk is the mailing list for OpenStreetMap Foundation members (Join the Foundation). All past messages are available here.

Vote

Motion to adopt draft v0.9 of the attribution guidelines and ask the Licensing Working Group (LWG) to publish the document.

Accepted with 3 votes in favour: Allan Mustard, Eugene Alvin Villar, Tobias Knerr 2 abstained with self-declared conflict of interest: Mikel Maron, Amanda McCann. 2 not voted (absent from the meeting): Jean-Marc Liotier, Guillaume Rischard.

Action item: Board to ask the Licensing Working Group (LWG) to publish the adopted attribution guidelines.

Engineering Working Group

Background Paul Norman (EWG, OWG) had gathered some people who drafted a scope for a restarted Engineering Working Group and proposed it to the board.

The first meeting was on 2021-04-02. Participants: 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. The board has asked them to provide a space for non-paid software efforts as well.

Previous board discussions:

• Responding to proposed Engineering Working Group restart (board chat)
• 2021-04-30 (public board meeting), 2021-04-09 (board chat)
• 2021-02 Discuss rebooting the Engineering Working Group (Screen-to-screen board meeting)

Suggested by Mikel Maron.

On EWG scope

• A charter was put forward to the board for consideration by the members involved in restarting EWG.
• Board feedback was provided, including a suggestion of EWG providing some level of coordination for software development in the OSM ecosystem – whether voluntary or as part of someone’s job with another entity.
  • Charter was updated based on the suggestion.

Next steps:

• Mikel to make revisions to the charter and circulate the draft to the board.
• Updated draft to be sent to EWG and to community for consultation.

Action item: Mikel to communicate with EWG regarding making revisions to the charter.

Tobias offered to help with subsequent steps, such as community consultation, if needed.

Advisory Board - monthly update

Background 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.
(single page displaying all the monthly updates that are linked below)

2021 Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May
2020 Jan, Feb, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2019 Jan, Mar, Jun, Jul, Aug, Oct
2018 Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Dec
2017 Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May (F2F), Oct

Topic presented by Amanda McCann (Secretary).

OSMF incorporating in another country

The Secretary contacted the Advisory Board members, asking

• if OSMF could move to the countries of Advisory Board members (Replies received from Slovakia and Germany).
• (Corporate Members) if there is anything that would make it easier for corporate members on the Advisory Board, to donate money to the OSMF and what is the best form of legal structure (for the OSMF) that it would make it the easiest for them to donate money to OSMF.

Attribution guidelines - request to share opinion from outside legal counsel

(Post-meeting addition, not mentioned during the meeting)

The board and the Advisory Board received an email on June 21st from Marc Prioleau (Facebook representative on the Advisory Board), regarding the opinion that the board received from an outside legal counsel with expertise on Intellectual Property (Kyle Mitchell) on the current attribution guidelines. The board was asked if that information can be made publicly available.

The answer was that the board does not intend to share it more widely, and that the board has asked the Licensing Working Group (LWG) not to share the letter's contents.

Monthly presentation: OpenStreetMap Philippines by Feye Andal

OpenStreetMap Philippines by Feye Andal.

About this monthly section:
In 2020 the board started hourly discussions with Corporate Member representatives on the Advisory Board and inviting Local Chapter representatives on the Advisory Board to give 10' presentations during public board meetings (this slot). A year later, during the 2021-04 board meeting, delegation of the Local Chapter presentation scheduling was suggested by the Secretary (Rory McCann), who was previously solely responsible for that. Mikel Maron and Eugene Alvin Villar offered to help with organisation.

Presentation by Feye Andal, arranged by Eugene Alvin Villar (board).

• Presentation (.pdf, 9 slides, 1.18 MB), including link to video

Question by Allan Mustard on how soon is the OSM PH going to apply for Local Chapter status?

Feye deferred the answer to Eugene.

• It takes a lot of time, money and effort to register and maintain the registration of an organisation with the government.
• Registration takes a few weeks to a month.
• The lack of a formal organisation is not a hindrance to the activities and projects of the OSM Philippines community.

Comments by other board members:

• Similar problems regarding registration with local community in India.
• Issue worth to be revisited.
• If it is a question of money, OSMF can help.

Any other business

Board member announcement

One of the board members has changed her name to “Amanda McCann”, and will be using that from now on. Previous minutes/documents used her old name of “Rory McCann”.

Guest comments or questions

Open to all OSMF members (join the OpenStreetMap Foundation).

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.

Comment on OpenStreetMap Philippines presentation

Comment by Pierre Béland (guest),
that it was great for the OSM volunteers to support Philippines community with the Haitian^* typhoon in 2014. And great to see this community progress with all these actions.

^*Hagupit typhoon (post-meeting addition)

Next meetings

• 16 July 2021, 14:00 UTC (mid-month board chat, closed to observers).
• 30 July 2021, 14:00 UTC (public board meeting).

Open board meetings take place online once a month, usually on the last Friday of the month at 14:00 UTC.

See the Monthly Board meetings page to find out where board meetings are announced and for a subscription link to have future board meetings automatically added to your calendar.

Meeting adjourned ~14:35 UTC.

Acronyms