Board/Minutes/2023-05

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Meeting date and start time: Thursday 25 May 2023 at 13:00 UTC
Minutes approved by the board on 2023-06-29.

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.

The topics of the agenda get locked one week before the meeting, except the "any other business" section.

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

Acronyms

Participants

Board members

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

  • [13'] Arnalie Vicario
  • [04'] Craig Allan
  • [05'] Guillaume Rischard (joined 3 minutes after start)
  • [29'] Mikel Maron
  • [04'] Mateusz Konieczny
  • [06'] Roland Olbricht (until 72 minutes after start)
  • [17'] Sarah Hoffmann (Chairing)

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

Officers and board
Biographies

Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.

Not Present

Guests

  • 20 guests, including Tasauf A Baki Billah (Presentation: OSM Bangladesh community)

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. To assess them, click on the 3 dots on the top right of the black video-window.

Administrative

Previous minutes

Circular Resolutions

No circulars

Action item updates

Public board action items - About
Filter by assignee Arnalie Craig Guillaume Mateusz Mikel Roland Sarah Not assigned
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Reportage

Arnalie Vicario

Local Chapters - Draft Acceptability Guidelines

https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/85

Drafted a proposal for Local Chapter acceptability guidelines, which will be presented to the next LCCWG meeting. Feedback by other board members is welcome.

Revitalising the Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee

https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/70

Might have discussion about diversity and inclusion during SotM US 2023.

Craig Allan

Strategic planning

Action items:
-https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/54
-https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/55

Slowly ongoing.

Executive director - Establish what we'd want an executive director to do/not do

https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/9

Paused until the community is consulted on the fourth cluster of the Strategic plan outline, to provide more clarity on how people think about the approach.

Mateusz Konieczny

Attribution

Action items:
-https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/62
-https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/63

  • Has created a list of potential targets for enforcing attribution requirements.
  • As it was not created in time to add it to the agenda, it will be discussed during the mid-month board chat.
  • Plans to ask the community to help with some tricky cases, where people reported problematic maps years ago, but it is difficult to find the maps now.

Mikel Maron

Launching fundraising campaign

https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/2

Re-establish regular Advisory Board meetings with meaningful agendas

https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/21

Will be marked complete, as there have been two Advisory Board meetings in 2023 and a third one will be scheduled in July.

HOT trademark agreement

https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/72

  • Talked with Kate Chapman (HOT president) and re-established the basis for the discussion and various options.
  • Discussions will resume after the new HOT Executive Director is seated (beginning of June), who will be a more stable point of contact.

Roland Olbricht

No updates.

Guillaume Rischard

API account creation

https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/74

Ticket to be closed.

OWG - getting redundant links set-up data centers

Work on that as part of long-term network stability plans.

Sarah Hoffmann

EU registration - Find local points of contacts to clarify legal questions

https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/6

  • Sarah scheduled a meeting in mid-June with Hub Brussels, who help companies settle in Belgium.
    • Guillaume offered to be present but the timing did not work.
  • No reaction from the Netherlands.
  • Guillaume will set up a meeting in Luxembourg.

Engineering Working Group

https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/44
https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board-action-items/-/issues/45

Talked with Andy and Tom about supporting website development - will present a plan at the next board meeting.

Treasurer's report

  • Figures shared within the board.
  • Nothing important happening.

Revision of finance committee page on OSM wiki

  • Revision to restructure the Finance committee page (Section: composition) shared by Mikel within the Board, provide clarity on roles:
    • Board members are designated full committee members.
    • Advisors will be non-board members who are not expected to attend regular meetings and will be consulted on an as-needed basis.
    • Third group who will be helping the fundraising campaign as ambassadors.

Collection of sponsor funds for local chapter conferences

Looking into what it would take for OSMF to take financial funds from companies and forward them to Local Chapters. This was a request both by some corporate sponsors of regional State of the Maps (SotMs) and by some Local Chapters (e.g. OSM Belgium for SotM EU 2023). The idea is that if a company is sponsoring a regional SotM at a certain level, they would send the money to OSMF, and OSMF would forward it to the Local Chapter which is organising the regional SotM.

  • Will ease the financial administration on corporate sponsors of regional SotMs and Local Chapters.
    • For two Corporate Members, at least 50 emails for each one were sent by OSMF in order to set up an account on their procurement system. For future funding from those organisations, fewer emails will be needed, so that is work that can be avoided by some local chapters when they're organising a regional SotM.
  • Provides benefit for the role OSMF can take.
  • Alignment with our fundraising goals.

Two potential processes were mentioned

  • 1. A corporate sponsor gives a single donation to OSMF once per year, and it also covers sponsorship for some regional SotMs. OSMF then sends the money to the regional SotMs. Cohesive ask from several OSM entities taken together and funds designated for various things.
  • 2. The Local Chapters which organise a regional SotM contact OSMF, which acts as a mediator for taking and forwarding the funds, on a per-request basis.

Concerns

This can trigger taxes, banking licences or anti-money-laundering rules if done wrong.

On tax implications for receiving donations

  • Michelle Heydon consulted with her accountant, and mentioned that if we receive funds from members, there are no tax implications and minimal processing time.
  • Mikel seems to have received different information by Roland and Guillaume.
  • Taxes might be different, depending on the country.

On potential money mishandling by recipients of funds which were provided via OSMF

  • There will be explicit requests, and we will be the facilitator, rather than being a guarantee or taking responsibility.
  • If any mishandling case happens, it should be taken into consideration for future facilitation.

Other questions during discussion

  • Will the money be part of the fundraising campaign this year, specific for Local Chapters..?
  • If yes, do we distribute the amount equally?
  • Do we set criteria for the distribution..?
  • Will this be something for local chapters only or for informal communities? E.g. in Asia, only Japan is a LC and they are helping with organizing SotM Asia, but they will not be the host of the conference itself.

Other point mentioned during discussion

  • It seems that we have agreed to do this once, and let's see how it goes.

Suggestions

  • Overhead for providing the service.
  • Consulting all Local Chapters and regional SotM organising teams (e.g. SotM Asia 2023 organising team), either via the Advisory Board or via the Local Chapters and Communities Working Group (LCCWG).
  • Take care of how money is spent (see mishandling below)
    • Suggestion to be explicit about this and provide guidance/expectations.
    • If we get financially involved, we must be more involved with the actions taken.
  • Act as a mediator only for Local Chapters and regional SotMs, that have received a trademark agreement.

Action items

  • Mikel to figure out tax implications for receiving donations, what are the rules and how to handle them.
  • Arnalie to bring up the issue of collection of sponsor funds by OSMF for local chapter conferences.
  • Mikel to draft something more thorough to try to address everyone's questions.

Comment by Imagico (guest) on the chat that the previous discussion on the Advisory Board on this was on 10/11 2018.

Secretary's report

2023-05-09 meeting of the OSMF board with the Advisory Board on the strategic plan

  • Presented the strategic planning process during the 2023-05-09 Advisory Board meeting.
  • Good discussion by the Corporate Members and Local Chapters present.

2023-05-23 meeting of the OSMF board with the Overture Steering committee

Meeting organised between Mikel and Marc Prioleau (Overture Executive Director).
Got a better picture of things at Overture.

Agenda:

  • Overture's upcoming roadmap: what they plan to do and release (schemas, reference systems, classifications of data). They will probably release something in the coming weeks.
  • OSMF 2023 priorities: strategic planning process and our technical priorities in the next years.
  • Establishing communication channels between OSMF and Overture.
    • Marc will be our regular point of contact.
    • Suggestion to connect the Licensing Working Group (LWG) and Overture legal group, to work out any questions ahead of releases.
    • There was discussion about future connections on tooling, data, communications.

Next step: Meetings every couple of months.

Local Chapters reports

  • Arnalie is reminding Local Chapters to send their 2021/2022 chapter reports.
  • All reports will be publicly available and a quick synopsis will probably be written.

Microsoft's MapBuilder

  • We had more discussions with Microsoft about MapBuilder.
  • Microsoft has been talking with the LWG, and the legal considerations (how they present OSM and getting agreements) have been resolved to a satisfactory level.
  • We have asked Microsoft to start a public discussion about what single-sign-on (SSO) means for MapBuilder.
  • They have agreed that individuals who sign-up for MapBuilder and start contributing to OSM, will be able to use their accounts as fully outside of MapBuilder tools, as persons who sign-up to OSM in any other way. They are also preparing communications about this.
  • Once the single-sign-on public discussion has started, we have indicated that automatic account creation could start.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • We could also say that SSO has to happen first and no automatic account creation.
    • We have communicated that starting the SSO discussion would be sufficient, and it would be unfair to change that.
  • The MapBuilder team seems dedicated to see this through.
  • Concern: temporary.

Suggestion: ask for or put a timeline.

Adopt the fundraising guidelines

  • The fundraising guidelines were drafted within the board.
  • Consultation: There was outside consultation (blog post, message on community.osm.org) with only positive feedback.

Vote: Adopt the fundraising guidelines

Motion to adopt the fundraising guidelines.

Unanimously approved on 2023-05-25 with 7 votes in favour: Arnalie Vicario, Craig Allan, Guillaume Rischard, Mateusz Konieczny, Mikel Maron, Roland Olbricht, Sarah Hoffmann.

Strategic Plan Discussion

Summary

On cluster B (community) consultation: Post-meeting note: consultation included: thread on community.osm.org, thread on talk@openstreetmap.org, thread on osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org.

  • This section seemed to be the most controversial.
  • There was feedback about the content (e.g. by Simon Poole, Frederik Ramm) and about duplicated points.
  • Conclusions:
    • It was not clearly communicated that this work was based on the pre-existing strategic plan outline.
    • The "why's" of the sections are missing.

General suggestions

Please note that it was not always clear which suggestions were intended for the board and which for the Strategic Planning team (which includes two board members).

  • Clearer communication on: the process (pace, consolidation, reporting, next steps, timeline), categorisation/prioritisation of actions (e.g. short/long term and expected level of effort).
  • Consolidation of the actions with the feedback.
  • Think about a "why" section.
  • Rework the preamble of the strategic plan outline.
  • Discuss prioritisation.

Suggestions on categorisation/prioritisation of actions

Categorising actions as: Short/medium/long-term

  • The board is always changing, but it might be good to have these set.

Categorising actions as: Urgent and important, to help the future boards.

  • Urgent actions should be done by the current board.

On prioritisation

  • The prioritisation might not align with the priorities of the next board.
  • We can set objectives which have longevity beyond this board.
  • The future board can do whatever they want.

Suggestions for board members

  • Offering live consultation. Arnalie offered to support the communities she would like to represent: Asia, Africa and Latin America (who explicitly reached-out to her).
    • We cannot do this on a global level. We would have to talk to the communities directly.
    • There will be consultations during SotM-US 2023 (Mikel and Arnalie will attend), SotM-France 2023 (Sarah will attend) and SotM-Baltic 2023 (Mateusz will attend). SotMs are in mid-June.
  • Discuss during June screen-to-screen board meeting: timeline, and what to do with the strategic plan in the end to put the actions into practice in 2-5 years.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Some actions are already in motion.
  • Funders will be interested to see if the strategic plan aligns with our priorities of the fundraising campaign.
  • Important to do the strategic planning before we get a lot of money, as afterwards the discussion becomes more difficult.

Monthly presentation - OSM Bangladesh community

Slides

Comments by board members

  • Great to see the enthusiasm and work.
  • One of the board members had experience using OSM in Bangladesh in research project and the data was great.
  • The increase in gender diversity is amazing.
  • The community building impressive.

On OSM data use and partnerships with local NGOs and local government units

Question by Arnalie Vicario (board): The OSM community in Bangladesh has grown a lot in number of members (84) and volunteers (500). How is the OSM data use? Have there been partnerships with local NGOs and local government units and promotion of OSM data and open data in general?

> Governmental agencies: Before the pandemic we were closely collaborating with some governmental agencies, e.g. Bureau of statistics for using OSM for the Census. After the pandemic, the communication broke down and failed to push it forward for the new Census.
> NGOS: We have been supporting initiatives from the American Red Cross, MSF projects, Save the Children programs. NGOs administration and people change a lot and retaining communication channels has been challenging.
> Companies:
> We had supported the mapping activities of one of the largest motorbike ride-sharing companies in Bangladesh and helped to integrate OSM in their process.
> A start-up providing map-data has launched and some of their services are based on OSM.
> 2-3 delivery startups are currently using OSM, in addition to the largest mobile financing corporations.

Roland had to leave at 72 minutes after the start.

On internet connectivity and accessing OSM in the rural areas

Question by Craig Allan (board): In Africa we have a real problem with getting people connected to the internet to work on OSM. How is the internet connectivity in the rural areas in Bangladesh, such as the far north..? Can people access a data-intensive service like OSM?

> In the towns and divisional districts they have good internet connectivity.
> There are challenges in remote places.
> We are currently trying decentralising the OSM movement to remote places by engaging the educational institutes more. We'll launch by the end of this year an initiative called "Maphoppens" to engage for high school students (YouthMappers support mostly University students). Will empower the movement by having good volunteer retention and with local knowledge. We will also try to engage scouts.
> Mobile connectivity is good in most areas.

On giving directions and addressing system in Bangladesh

Question by Guillaume Rischard (board): How do you give directions? Is there an addressing system? Is OSM useful for that?

> We were working on it before the pandemic. We're still focusing on having a local repository and system based on OSM.
> The addressing system is very complex, even in the capital: there are 10-11 different addressing systems in city areas. For rural areas, houses are mostly identified by the owners name and there is no numbering.
> We are closely working with delivery startups and transportation companies. All other map providers are not accurate enough in terms of addresses.

Any other business

Donation of geofencing patents

The LWG had requested this topic to be added to the board agenda.

  • The OSMF does not own any patents.
  • Geo-fencing is not something of value to OSM.

Suggestions

  • Own the patent and say that anyone can use it.
    • It's not our core business to own intellectual property or patents.
    • We would have to enforce the patents.

Vote: Write back that we are not interested in the offer of geofencing patents (approved)

Motion to write back that we are not interested in the offer of geofencing patents.

Approved on 2023-05-25 with 5 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Guillaume Rischard, Mateusz Konieczny, Mikel Maron, Sarah Hoffmann.
1 abstained: Arnalie Vicario
1 did not vote: Roland Olbricht (had disconnected).

Next step: Reply to the LWG.

Request for trademark licence to sell OSM merchandise and donate all profits

The Licensing Working Group (LWG) had requested this topic to be added to tbe board agenda.

  • The LWG received a request from a person to sell OSM merchandise and donate all profits.
  • The person seems to have set up a store with products including OSM designs and were informed they need a trademark licence.
  • A licensing agreement would be needed.
  • The OSM logo on the products does not look right.
  • The CWG has talked before about making merchandise available.

The following is an excerpt from the email that the LWG received, copied on the chat by a board member:
"All profits made out of this store are going directly to the OSM Foundation. The products are priced with a profit margin of up to 30%, to make sure I can donate at least around € 5 for every product."

Suggestions:

  • Email LWG and suggest that the person to talk with the Communication Working Group (CWG) and perhaps become a CWG member.
  • Pass this decision via a circular.
  • The board to draft a response.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Easier if the process is directly managed by the OSMF.
  • The requestor seems motivated.
  • There is lack of activity from OSMF to make merchandise available.
  • We shouldn't do merchandise just because everyone else is doing it.

Link shared on the chat: https://www.reddit.com/r/openstreetmap/comments/139uqvy/osm_merchandise/

Motion to direct the requestor to contact the CWG about merchandising

Amended motion: direct the requestor to contact the CWG about merchandising.

Initial motion was: deny the request and encourage the requestor to contact the CWG.

There was no vote.

Action item: Dorothea to send the LWG emails to the board.

Guest comments or questions

On collection of sponsor funds for local chapter conferences

Comment by Simon Poole (guest) on the chat that on the topic of funneling funds through the OSMF as a regular service, he would be slightly concerned just as Roland with regards to potential financial intermediary status (aka money laundering regulation impact). In any case historically he believes there was one case in which the OSMF was at least asked to do this for a SotM that might be worth digging out.

Suggestion: Think about a patent strategy.

Next meetings

Open board meetings take place online monthly: currently on the last Thursday of the month, at 13:00 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. The dates of public board meetings are also added to https://osmcal.org/

Meeting adjourned 98 minutes after the start.

Acronyms

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