Board/Minutes/2023-03

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Minutes approved by the board on 2023-04-27.
The topics of the agenda get locked one week before the meeting.

Please note that the individual points mentioned below usually reflect the opinion of one or more board members and not necessarily of the whole board. Official board decisions are taken during the meetings or by voting using circulars, and votes are listed in the minutes.

Date and time: Thursday 30 March 2023 at 13:30 UTC - Countdown

Video room: https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/dor-2cd-qah-rim
using BigBlueButton.

Acronyms

Participants

Board members

["talk" time*] Name (role, notes)

  • [01:19] Arnalie Vicario (joined 2 min after start)
  • [10:53] Craig Allan
  • [24:45] Guillaume Rischard (Chairing)
  • [04:49] Mateusz Konieczny
  • [15:56] Mikel Maron
  • [06:02] Roland Olbricht
  • [07:39] Sarah Hoffmann

*Includes time when the microphone was activated due to noise.

Officers and board
Biographies

Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.

Not Present

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.

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Administrative

Previous minutes

Circular Resolutions

2023/Res07 Update of Dorothea's contract

The OSMF board approves to renew Dorothea's1 contract, which is up for yearly review on March 17th 2023. As per contract, the renewed contract includes an inflation compensation of 7.22%. The new daily fee will be 360.60 EUR.

Approved on 2023-03-26 with 6 votes in favour: Mikel Maron, Guillaume Rischard, Roland Olbricht, Mateusz Konieczny, Sarah Hoffmann, Arnalie Vicario.
1 did not vote: Craig Allan.

Circular by Sarah Hoffmann.

1 See Long term contractors

2023/Res08 Approve active contributor membership application #2023031810000131

The Board currently decides on active contributor membership applications based on non-mapping contributions on a case-by-case basis.

Rejected on 2023-03-27 with 6 votes against:

  • Mateusz Konieczny (does not qualify for active contribution membership as there is not enough mapping activity and no other OSM-specific activity. Joining as regular member, mapping, joining as corporate member etc is welcomed but does not qualify for this type of membership).
  • Arnalie Vicario (does not meet mapping criteria (42 mapping days in past 1 year). Contributor may be eligible for their non-mapping contribution but need more clarification on their other contributions (within a year before the application). Please advise to re-apply and to give more details on their non-direct mapping participation in the past year.)
  • Guillaume Rischard (J'ai peur qu'il y ait une légère confusion entre la qualité de contributeur OpenStreetMap, qui est ouvert à tout le monde, et celle de membre de la fondation, où cette personne pourra adhérer gratuitement si elle cartographie plus de 42 jours cette année, ou si elle souhaite régler une cotisation de £15. Cette contributrice est en tout cas encouragée à continuer à cartographier le [Pays], que ça soit dans le cadre de projets HOT ou juste comme ça autour d'elle.)
  • Mikel Maron (sounds like a cool plan. get working first on contributions then become a member.).
  • Sarah Hoffmann
  • Roland Olbricht

1 did not vote: Craig Allan.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

Action item updates

See Board/Action_Items.

Reportage

Board action items

Will be moved on a public Gitlab repository and include the action items from the 2023 screen-to-screen board meeting.

Transparency register

Guillaume Rischard can't find the login for the Transparency register.

Revitalising the Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee

Related to the 2020-10 action item: to revitalise the Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee. Owner: 2020-10 to 2021-11-26: Mikel with help of Amanda and Allan. After 2021-11-26: Board.

New owner of the action item: Arnalie Vicario.

Inventory of existing accounts

Related to the 2022 Screen-to-screen action item: to make inventory of the existing accounts and survey the sysadmins who have access. [Session: Mitigating bus factors]

Action item to be removed.

HOT trademark agreement

New owner of the action item: Mikel Maron.

Attribution

Related to the 2023 screen-to-screen action item: Mateusz to start reviewing the page on the OSM wiki "Lacking proper attribution", find the worst offenders that are still in active operation (may involve asking other community members to help)

Treasurer's report

Report

  • Normal level of donations and corporate memberships.
  • Slightly overrunning the personnel's budget, but numbers might include an older invoice.
  • Everything else is on-budget or lower.
  • The report circulated within the board will be published post-meeting in the minutes.
  • The numbers below were based on Xero (accounting platform that the OSMF uses) reports and manual editing.

Action item: Guillaume Rischard to look at the financial reporting spreadsheet.

Suggestion: Meeting of Roland Olbricht with Guillaume Rischard and Michelle Heydon (OSMF accountant), if a suitable time can be found.

Contracting a fundraiser

  • There was a consultation with the community about the idea to bring a fundraiser.
  • The board had a meeting with Courtney Williamson last week.

On the contract

  • Latest version of a contract with Courtney Williamson shared within the board.
  • There was an email circulated between board members yesterday.

Suggestions:

  • Include in the contract that the contractor and the fundraising committee will agree on guidelines on how the fundraising will be done. Important to have built-in control mechanisms - control on how to fundraise and not fundraise.
  • Approve via a circular, instead of during this meeting, as i) there was an email circulated in the board yesterday, which some board members did not have time to read and ii) there was no topic on the agenda.
    • The points raised during the meeting with Courtney were addressed, board members have been talking about this for a long time and the decision should not be delayed.

Other points mentioned

  • Consulting divided in 3 categories.
  • Courtney will be consulting with the board and the fundraising committee ("Finance" committee).

Text from the contract

Provided by Mikel Maron during the meeting.

  • consults regularly with board, finance and fundraising committees and other stakeholders;
  • consults and collaborates with a small “kitchen cabinet” of volunteer fundraisers
  • writes talking points, case statements to support board, working groups, and leaders of local communities
  • writes website and other copy for improved messaging
  • reports out to the OSM community through diary entries, educates about philanthropy, upholds values of transparency and collaboration

Main text for the description in the contract

Provided by Courtney Williamson during the meeting.

Strategy

  • shares best practices and new approaches for philanthropy and strategic communications
  • coordinates prospect research, cultivation and stewardship
  • extends existing SME and donor-focused ‘major gifts’ network
  • leads a broad-based campaign; establishes process for future such campaigns

Coordination

  • suggests a development schedule through the 20th anniversary
  • recommends improvements for corporate and donor giving (messaging, cultivation, stewardship, reporting, etc.)
  • identifies technical infrastructure improvements
  • coordinates in-person giving events and workshops at regional events; consults and coordinates with local communities on their fundraising, including joint asks for sponsorship
  • extends existing approaches to grant writing where possible

Communication

  • consults regularly with board, finance and fundraising committees and other stakeholders;
  • consults and collaborates with a small “kitchen cabinet” of volunteer fundraisers
  • writes talking points, case statements to support board, working groups, and leaders of local communities
  • writes website and other copy for improved messaging
  • reports out to the OSM community through diary entries, educates about philanthropy, upholds values of transparency and collaboration

Vote: Contracting Courtney Williamson as a fundraiser

Motion:

Sign a contract with Courtney Williamson and get underway with the fundraising campaign for the year.

Approved with 5 votes in favour: Arnalie Vicario, Craig Allan (Proceduraly, we should not have a vote without a week's notice, but in this case getting going with fundraising is really urgent, and I'm prepared to vote right now)., Mikel Maron, Roland Olbricht, Sarah Hoffmann.
2 abstained: Guillaume Rischard (did not have time to read the email circulated yesterday. Vote is not due to distrust.), Mateusz Konieczny (did not have time to read the email circulated yesterday).

Secretary's report

Advisory Board related

There was an Advisory Board meeting on 2023-03-14.

  • OSMF's plan for fundraising was the main item of discussion. There was input and support for the plan.
  • There was robust discussion about Overture, mainly between the Local Chapters (LCs).
    • Mikel Maron had provided an update on communications of the board with the Overture Steering Committee.
    • Risks and opportunities for OSM were stated.
    • OSMF is taking an approach of cautious engagement.
  • Need for updates to OSM.org to more represent the community - discussed for a few minutes.
    • Not much time to talk about the topic.
    • Suggestion: provide on www.osm.org a description and opportunities to engage, as many local chapter websites do.

Fundraising consultation on OSMF-talk and forums

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

  • Reactions across the spectrum, largely supportive.
  • Good points made.
  • Some people offered to help.

Approve travel policy for Operations Working Group

Points mentioned during discussion

  • Good feedback from the Operations Working Group (OWG), e.g. on how we handle insurance.
  • The expense policy is also a bit fuzzy.

Suggestion: Make a second iteration of the policy and update it later, after the policy has been approved and used for some time.

Vote: Approve travel policy for Operations Working Group

Motion:

Adopt a new travel policy for the Operations Working Group, as posted on https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Travel_policy_for_OWG-related_travel

Approved with 6 votes in favour: Arnalie Vicario, Craig Allan, Guillaume Rischard, Mikel Maron, Roland Olbricht, Sarah Hoffmann.
1 abstained: Mateusz Konieczny (unsure if it would be better to integrate the feedback. No really strong opinions.).

Motion by Sarah Hoffmann.

2023 Screen-to-screen meeting action plans

Points mentioned during discussion

  • Build on the momentum of the 2023 screen-to-screen, which lasted 4 hours.
  • Some areas have a small action plan and a person responsible.
  • Should keep tabs on all areas.

Each board member talked for ~ 2 minutes on their progress with the screen-to-screen area they are working on.

Order same as during the meeting.

Mikel Maron

  • Fundraising: things in motion.
  • Relations with Overture, Microsoft MapBuilder and corporate actors: spoke during the Advisory Board meeting and will talk about MapBuilder later.
  • In person board meeting: on the radar.
  • Effective communication plan: on the radar. Want to work with Guillaume on a quarterly report by the Chairperson.
  • Corporate Membership restructuring: Is becoming part of the fundraising plan.
  • Attribution: Mateusz Konieczny will implement a robust plan.

Guillaume Rischard

  • Focusing on operations, working with Grant Slater (SSRE).
  • Vector Tiles: waiting for pricing/estimate from the person the board talked with.

Roland Olbricht

  • Budgetary controls: under way.
  • Corporate Membership restructuring: working with Mikel Maron.
  • Contact stakeholders to flesh out a list of doable projects. The initial list of projects was sent by Roland to the board.
  • Jochen's database: no action yet.

Sarah Hoffmann

  • EU registration: no action yet. Need to find knowledgeable people to provide details.
  • Establishing communications between the Engineering Working Group (EWG) and the developer community: Talked with Roland Olbricht and Tobias Knerr during FOSSGIS 2023.

Arnalie Vicario

  • Communication with community has taken place for major decisions (executive director/data model/etc) in a way that at least allows comments to reach board before decision is implemented: no update.
  • Establish 1-3 further local chapters outside EU / North America: Related to action items inherited from the previous board. Reviewing past information. The Local Chapters and Communities Working Group (LCCWG) was not able to meet this month.

Mateusz Konieczny

  • Attribution: Reviewing what other community members have reported in the past on the OSM wiki about missing attribution.

Craig Allan

Apology to the board for the delay regarding board work due to personal reasons.

  • More diverse Working Groups (WGs) (with Arnalie): No update.
  • Prepare a new iteration of the OSMF strategic plan: Working on it. Will sent something to Allan Mustard and Sarah Hoffmann by the end of the week.
  • Executive director discussion: Will contact people who have been thinking about this.

Suggestions: Mikel Maron and Dorothea Kazazi to make a list of the screen-to-screen action items.

Membership Working Group's funding request

Request from the Membership Working Group (MWG) to ask consultant who has previously worked on CiviCRM (OSMF membership database) to implement other MWG-requested changes.

  • fix a bug for renewing members: When the verification fails, the existing membership is set to pending, overriding the current status. The next time the member tries to renew, it will then create a new membership.
  • implement the minimum mapping days requirement for new members that in theory is active since last year, but currently unenforced.

Points mentioned during discussion

  • Request seems reasonable.
  • Need work on CiviCRM to implement the board decision for requiring a minimum number of mapping days to get an OSMF membership.

Input from Michael Spreng (MWG) on the question about what MWG needs and how is work going

  • Could do more regular meetings, but none motivated to organise them.
  • Day-to-day business done, two people replying to emails.
  • Bank transfers done manually
  • Active contributor memberships automated, so workload kept low.
  • A new MWG volunteer will start helping soon.
  • On previous contract with Lemniscus: budgeted around EUR 5000, went over 2000.

Input from Treasurer

  • We could afford to give EUR 7000 to the MWG.

Vote: Approve Membership Working Group's funding request

Motion:

Approve the Membership Working Group's budget request of EUR 5,000.

Unanimously approved with 7 votes in favour: Arnalie Vicario, Craig Allan, Guillaume Rischard, Mikel Maron, Mateusz Konieczny, Roland Olbricht, Sarah Hoffmann.

Trademark licence request by Fédération des Pros d'OSM - FPOSM

Florian Lainez (FPOSM) was present during the meeting.

  • Minimum conditions should be applied for granting the trademark.
  • Some of Severin's comments are valid.

Suggestion: Have an intermediate, time-limited agreement and then create a standard agreement for special interest groups.

On an intermediate agreement

  • Should be time-limited.
  • Somehow similar to a Local Chapter agreement, with conditions, removing the geographical clauses.
  • Have a safety term that the agreement can be unilaterally revoked by any of the parties.

On a future agreement for special interest groups

  • Suggestion to have first a discussion with the community about the values of the interest groups should represent.

On a future special interest groups agreement with FPOSM

  • Need the agreement of OSM France (French OSMF chapter), before signing the FPOSM special-interest group agreement (not this one). This is required by the Local Chapter agreement that OSM France and OSMF have signed.

On FPOSM statures' clause and timing

  • FPOSM statures have a problematic section regarding income coming from memberships and provided services. FPOSM will have a meeting next month, where the section might be modified. Perhaps wait to grant the licence after the meeting.
    • Not a devastating clause, we can see how things develop. There will be mode details to adjust when we create the agreement for special interest groups.
    • The clause seems boilerplate. "Services provided" might include holding a conference.
    • The organisation is a non-profit.
  • Regarding timing, there needs to be a community consultation regarding the FPOSM agreement as a special interest group.

On exclusivity of trademark

  • The OSMF will not grant exclusivity of the trademarks in France to FPOSM.
  • OSM can be used commercially in France, without participating in FPOSM.

Vote: Grant the trademark licence request to FPOSM

Amended motion:

Agree to grant FPOSM a 2 year trademark licence on the OpenStreetMap name. Make that trademark agreement one that can be terminated by either side without any preconditions or notice. Make the agreement only valid when it has been approved by OSM France. Make it non-renewable and agree in the contract that we'll then move towards special interest group status. And task the Licensing Working Group to come with the exact language.

Unanimously approved with 7 votes in favour: Arnalie Vicario, Craig Allan, Guillaume Rischard, Mikel Maron, Mateusz Konieczny, Roland Olbricht, Sarah Hoffmann.

Motion by Guillaume Rischard.

Comment by Maggie Cawley on the chat in support of fee for service work, as non-profits need to make money. "One way to do that is to use our expertise to support other people integrating OSM into their workflows and systems."

Response to Microsoft's latest suggestion regarding MapBuilder

  • The email that the board intended to send to Microsoft, was not send.
  • Microsoft recently sent to the board a proposal to change MapBuilder, which fulfils all legal requirements, according to the Licensing Working Group (LWG).

Concern regarding OSM user login

They still hide the user login. It does not seem that MapBuilder users can find and use the credentials associated with the automatically-created OSM account to log-in to other OSM services, e.g. take part in discussions at community.osm.org

Concern regarding double licensing on contributions via MapBuilder

Contributions via MapBuilder are double licensing - concern regarding losing the share-alike agreement.

  • It is not a legal problem but a problem for OSMF.
  • In the second iteration the share-alike requirement goes away from the data that is contributed via MapBuilder.
  • Microsoft is a founding member of Overture who want to provide data under a different licence.

Points mentioned during discussion

  • We're not sure about Microsoft's intent.
  • DWG was told by Microsoft that if a MapBuilder user got blocked by OSMF but made an edit which Microsoft deemed good, they would feed it to OSM.
  • Suggestion: incorporate in the email to Microsoft that it is not allowed to create a second account for such cases.

Suggestions

  • We should communicate our concerns to Microsoft.
  • Incorporate text about DWG blocks and how these are handled.

Mikel Maron and Guillaume Rischard might have a meeting about the email to Microsoft after this meeting.

Monthly presentation - TeachOSM by Jess Beutler

10 minute presentation about TeachOSM by Jess Beutler.

Questions and comments

Comment by Roland Olbricht (board)
that during the FOSSGIS conference there was discussion about how FOSSGIS could improve the outreach of OSM. Having programs for teachers was considered, and could have a head start by learning from TeachOSM.

> Happy to share resources. Materials on the TeachOSM website are open-contribution, and could add materials designed for specific countries/regions.

Comments by Craig Allan (board)

  • TeachOSM might push people to make hundreds of contributions, instead of just a few.
  • he's interested in the work done by TeachOSM in Uganda and
  • would like to work with TeachOSM to create a stream of OSM users and developers moving up from school-age to University and YouthMappers, to get a sold base of mappers coming into Africa.

> The work done in Uganda is purely by OSM Uganda, who are great TeachOSM partners.

Other points mentioned during discussion

Any other business

FOSSGIS report

FOSSGIS is the German conference of open GIS and OSM - many professionals attend.

  • Roland Olbricht talked about the data model and bigger projects we can do.
  • Sarah Hoffmann gave an introduction about the OSMF.
    • All big German GIS professionals know about OSM and use it, but don't know much about the OSMF.

u>Suggestion

  • Increase OSMF outreach. There is a lot of potential to find support.
  • The German Local Chapter has some economic resources, so OSMF can get support for small projects.

Registering with the Digital Public Goods Alliance - report

  • OSM is a digital public good.
  • Craig Allan has already talked with Bo Percival, who initially suggested OSMF joining the registry of Digital Public Goods Alliance.

Potential advantages

  • Get exposed to National-level contributors and international-level NGOs.
  • Could be used in fundraising.

Potential disadvantages

  • None stated.
    • Consider if there are any controversial organisations listed and whether we would accidentally support something controversial or unrelated to us.

Commitments

  • We'll be included in their registry of list of organisation and included in their communications channels.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Bo had offered to fill the application for OSMF as much as possible and OSMF would complete it.

Suggested motion: The OSMF, on behalf of OSM contributors and users everywhere, recognises its key role as a major provider of global digital public goods, especially in the development, academic spaces and navigation spaces, and resolves that the OSMF should register as a digital public goods provider with the Digital Public Goods Alliance.

Suggestions

  • Take this to a circular.
  • Craig to become the liaison.

Guest comments or questions

The following comment and question were written in the chat during the meeting, but not during the "Guest comments or questions" section:

"Emerson Rocha here. This will be my guest question at the end:"

"The Moderation Committee, chosen by OSMF board last year, recently enforced a temporary ban on OSMF channels, including osmf-talk (a mail list exclusive for OSMF members) to an OSMF member. When asked about a given copy of all textual evidence for the ban, including hidden context from the public, the Moderation Committee refused and redirected to "You have the right to appeal that decision to the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board of Directors." Can the OSMF board, before starting any kind of appeal process, decide to first give an OSMF member access to the full content of what is used against the person for being censored on OSMF sponsored channels?"

Next meeting

Open board meetings take place online once a month. The recurring day and time for board meetings in 2023 have not been set yet.

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.

Public board meeting on Thursday 27 April 2023, 13:00 UTC

Open to OSMF members.

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 107 minutes after start.

Acronyms

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