Board/Minutes/2022-06-09
Draft minutes.
Location: Video room at https://osmvideo.cloud68.co
using BigBlueButton.
Date and time: Thursday 9 June 2022 at 13:00 UTC - Countdown
Acronyms
Participants
Board members
- Eugene Alvin Villar
- Mikel Maron
- Amanda McCann
- Tobias Knerr
- Guillaume Rischard
- Roland Olbricht (audio issues)
- Jean-Marc Liotier
Officers and board
Biographies
Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.
Not Present
Guests
Not open to observers.
talk@/osmf-talk@ moderation team status
| Background |
|---|
| On 2022-05-23 the board approved five persons as moderators of the talk@ & osmf-talk@ list (only), to moderate as per the Etiquette guidelines and to follow the Process for Moderation.
* talk is the mailing list for all OpenStreetMap community members. All past messages are available here. Moderation related discussions in past three years:
More information can be found in the background sections of previous board meetings. |
Mailman (the software used to manage the OSM mailing lists) has two statuses which can be used in this case: "moderator" and "admin". Until now all the members of the Membership Working Group (MWG) had the admin password for osmf-talk.
- Moderation team members got "moderator" status on mailman for the talk@ and osmf-talk@ mailing lists.
- Allan Mustard asked for all the talk@/osmf-talk moderators to get the Admin access password for the respective mailing lists.
Map styles on osm.org, openstreetmap-carto
| Background |
|---|
| Related to the open letter to OSMF board members on the talk mailing list (further discussion).
OSM Carto is a community project, and the OSM Carto stylesheet is used for the generation of the default tile layer on the OpenStreetMap homepage. Other recent OSM Carto related links:
|
| Suggested by Tobias Knerr. |
Recent frustration regarding OSM Carto policy on accepting changes and surrounding issues.
Any initiatives that the board can take to help in medium/long term?
Points mentioned during discussion
- OSM Carto maintainers are not able to sort the issues themselves.
- Not a board issue, the board should not get involved.
- In similar situations in the past, the board had conversations with key people involved.
- Part of the solution is making it easier to set-up your own tile-style. New dev server will be more powerfull with more space - should have a copy of the database, so that people can do their own rendering.
On suggestion of direct conversations with OSM Carto maintainers
Suggestion: the board to have direct conversations with OSM Carto maintainers to find if there is consensus on things that would help and make recommendations.
Points mentioned
- Not necessary to talk to all maintainers of the OSM Carto project.
- Suggestion to talk to Christoph Hormann (OSM Carto maintainer) and condemn what he did, even when we're just users of the project.
- One of the board members has exchanged emails with Christoph Hormann.
- There have been complaints for OSM Carto for several years - focusing on a single issue does not address the root cause.
Other suggestions
- Suggest to OSM Carto maintainers to sign up to the Software dispute resolution panel (SDRP) (initially created for iD) and ask SDRP if they want to take this on. Non-binding advice.
- Wait for OSM Carto code of conduct investigation to finish.
Cross-posting community consultations to community.openstreetmap.org
| Background |
|---|
| The board usually asks the OSMF members for comments by posting on the osmf-talk (the mailing list for OpenStreetMap Foundation members (Join the Foundation). All past messages are available here.
community.osm.org (running Discourse) is currently live. It has been created to replace the OSM forum, help.openstreetmap.org - both being powered by software which are no longer supported - and potentially OSM mailing lists. Suggestion: The board to ask OSMF members for comments by posting both on the osmf-talk mailing list and on community.openstreetmap.org Minutes related to the creation of community.osm.org from recent meetings Related minutes from Operations meetings
|
| Suggested by Tobias Knerr. |
Suggestion to post consultations both on the osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org mailing list and on community.openstreetmap.org.
Points mentioned during discussion
- Restrictions on who can post can only be implemented on a category level, not at a tag-level.
- Currently there is no OSMF category on community.openstreetmap.org - requires some technical work (potentially also CiviCRM hacking) to add restrictions so only OSMF-members can post there (like currently done on the osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org mailing list).
- Eventually, the board would like to have an OSMF category, but can start with using an OSMF tag for related posts right away.
Post-meeting note: There is now a category about OSM Foundation-related discussion on community.openstreetmap.org (initial request for addition of the category).
Suggestion: Move the osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org mailing list entirely to community.openstreetmap.org as a members-only list.
* osmf-talk is the mailing list for OpenStreetMap Foundation members (Join the Foundation). All past messages are available here.
Expectations for consultations
It is difficult for all board members to read all the messages on multiple channels during membership consultations.
Suggestions
- The board member leading a topic which requires membership consultation to provide a summary of the consultation with key points, once discussion is concluded.
- Subscribe the osmf-talk mailing list to community.osm.org so that there is cross-posting.
- Open Github tickets on the OSM operations issue tracker for individual issues on community.osm.org
On replacing the mailing lists with categories on community.osm.org
The Discourse software behind community.osm.org offers a "mailing list mode".
Replacing OSM mailing lists which are hosted by OSMF is not of high priority now for the forums governance team of community.osm.org.
Current priorities
- Migration of forum.openstreetmap.org
- Migration of help.openstreetmap.org
- Migration of mailing lists
Pending issue: One can subscribe to community.osm.org categories by email but they cannot start a new community.osm.org thread via email yet. The issue has been raised to the forumgovernance team as something that needs to be fixed before start replacing mailing lists. (Post-meeting note: enabling the creation of posts via email is hard to do "until we have some idea of categories because we will need to pick an address for each category" - source.)
Action items
- Tobias Knerr to suggest to the forums governance team of community.osm.org the creation of a category for OSM Foundation discussion - which at some point will be restricted to OSMF members - on community.osm.org.
- Guillaume Rischard to find how to extract usernames from CiviCRM.
- Guillaume Rischard to message Grant Slater (SSRE) regarding community.osm.org.
Membership prerequisites
| Background |
|---|
| The OSMF membership voted in 2020-12 and decided the following:
"The board of directors shall, together with the OSMF Membership Working Group, work on a set of proposals to ensure that all successful applicants for membership or associate membership in the OpenStreetMap Foundation have made a reasonable amount of contributions to OpenStreetMap. The specific form of the contributions (e.g. mapping vs. non-mapping) does not make a difference for the fulfillment of these prerequisites. The board shall submit these proposals as possible resolutions at a general meeting in 2021." The rationale was presented here. The board some months before the 2021 annual general meeting (AGM) asked the volunteers of the Membership Working Group (MWG) to make proposals. The MWG did not have the human-power to complete the work in time for the Annual General Meeting in December 2021 and the board decided to submit the proposals on a General Meeting in April 2022. The General Meeting has now been cancelled. Related board discussions:
|
| Topic suggested during the mid-month board chat. |
On requiring an OSM account when signing up to be an OSMF member
- Even if the board doesn't pass the requirement of at least 15 days of mapping to become an OSMF member, we seem to imply that an OSM account is required when signing up for OSMF membership.
- While having an OSM account is not an official requirement to become an OSMF member, during signing up to become an OSMF member people are asked to provide their OSM account or select "No user".
On becoming an OSMF member without having mapped on OSM at all
Background: There was a point raised during the consultation of OSMF members on the membership prerequisites, that we have some important accessibility projects and it will be much harder for members of these communities to meet the 15 days membership requirements.
Suggestion
- Have a fall back option for considering non-mapping contributions, but not a formal process, like with the active contributor memberships. To be used infrequently, in exceptional cases where there is a significant barrier for mapping in OSM.
- Vote on a case by case basis.
- The default should be to reject the membership application if people have not mapped at least 15 days in their lifetime and people can appeal to the board.
On supporting memberships
Background: In the past it has been suggested to have an additional type of membership, where people can become OSMF members if they don't have done the minimum mapping and pay the membership fee - but they don't get any voting rights.
- Requires the OSMF members to approve a change to the OSMF Articles of Association (AoA).
OSMF participation in United Nations meeting on initiative regarding Open Source Software for sustainable development goals
| Background on the initiative about Open Source Software for Sustainable Development Goals (OSS4SDG) by the United Nations |
|---|
|
Launched by the Directorate-General for Informatics of the European Commission (DG DIGIT) and the United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technology (UNOICT). The first innovation event on 2022-06-08 was related to Sustainable Development Goal 4 “Quality Education” in cooperation with Moodle LMS. For their second innovation event, they are searching for new partners and "would like to explore possibilities of joint initiatives with the OpenStreetMap Foundation". |
| Topic suggested during the mid-month board chat. |
Report from the meeting
Guillaume was present during the first "innovation event" meeting (2022-06-08) of the UN initiative about Open Source Software for Sustainable Development Goals (OSS4SDG).
- Mostly met people in the United Nations (UN) IT shop, including Sebastian Rocca.
- United Nations do projects encouraging people to work on things like sustainable development goals/smart cities/Moodle and would like to do something similar with OSM.
- People were saying that they knew and were using OSM.
- UN mappers mostly work on humanitarian interventions.
Suggestion by people at the UN meeting
- Have an OSM meeting/hackathon in the UN general assembly room (New York).
They are ok for this suggestion to be discussed in public.
Points mentioned during discussion
- There was an OSM meeting in the UN conference centre in 2015. Talks were not recorded.
- Suggestion to show heritage sites on a map.
Sustainable development goals and OSM
- HOT has resources regarding sustainable development goals (SDGs) and OSM. They include a table listing SDGs and what is mapped on OSM for each of them.
- State of the Map 2018 talk (not recorded): Role of mapping in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) - by Laura Mugeha
- State of the Map 2016 talk: The World We Want: OpenStreetMap and the Sustainable Development Goals - by Tyler Radford.
- Link shared: HOT Open Mapping for SDGs Guide - Part IV - Using Open Data and Maps to Meet and Monitor SDGs.
On OSM communication and OSM copyright page
- People at the UN meeting expressed that the OSM communication was bad.
On the OSM copyright page
- It gets the most traffic besides www.osm.org, as it is linked from the attribution notice.
- Is confusing and boring.
- There were some changes approved last year, which are not live yet. The pull request is live.
- The about page is a bit better.
Suggestion: Rethink the structuring of the copyright page.
Action items:
- Guillaume Rischard to post on community.osm.org about the suggestion to have an OSM meeting/hackathon in the UN general assembly room.
- Mikel Maron to suggest to Communication Working Group (CWG) and Licensing Working Group (LWG) to think the restructuring of the copyright page.
State of the Map 2022 update
| Background |
|---|
| State of the Map 2022 will be a three day hybrid conference taking place in Florence, Italy and online. |
- The State of the Map organising committee (SotM WG) reached their sponsorship target (EUR 50,000), which might lead to a modest profit.
Snap donation
- Snap wants to make a donation to OSM and become a State of the Map 2022 sponsor.
- Snap have sent a legal agreement (not signed yet).
On cryptocurrencies
Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) related update
- The WMF stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations earlier this year, following a request for comments from the community.
- The WMF community's desire -was mainly due to the environmental impact and a general sense that some cryptocurrency related initiatives are scams.
OSMF
- OSMF has limited sources of donations.
- Any BTC donations to OSMF are changed into fiat money soon after being received.
- Reminder that the bank of Ireland might kick OSMF out, so OSMF should not forgo any payment method.
- OSMF recently received a notification from the bank of Ireland that one incoming transaction was stopped.
- When the OSMF account was set up with the bank of Ireland, it was explained to them that there will be incoming payments from various countries and they were fine with that.
OSMF-related discussion ended 87' after start.
Next meeting
Public meeting on Thursday 30 June 2022, 13:00 UTC, unless rescheduled - Countdown.
- The agenda of the public meeting will be here and topics will get locked one week before the meeting.
- Videoroom: https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/ror-nt7-6tu