Board/Minutes/2025-05

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Date and time: Thursday 29 May 2025 at 13:30 UTC.
Minuted approved during the 2025-06-26 board 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.

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

The topics of the agenda get locked one week before the meeting.

Acronyms

Participants

  • Craig Allan (Chairing)
  • Dani Waltersdorfer (until ~46 minutes after start)
  • Guillaume Rischard
  • Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
  • Maurizio Napolitano
  • Laura Mugeha
  • Roland Olbricht

Officers and Board Historic
Board member biographies Historic

Absent

Guests

  • 6 guests

Open to all OSM Foundation members. (Become a member of the Foundation, even for free if you are an active OSM contributor)

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

Approval of previous minutes

Circular Resolutions

2025/Res14 OSMF to endorse the UN Open Source Principles

Voting closing on 2025-05-01. Superseded by vote during the April 2025 board meeting (Approved).

Circular by Laura Mugeha.

Note: See https://unite.un.org/news/fifteen-organizations-endorse-un-open-source-principles

2025/Res15 CWG seeks Board authority to purchase a "Buffer" subscription

The Communication Working Group (CWG) uses an online service (Buffer) to post on social media. The OSMF has to pay for the subscription renewal and until this is done, CWG cannot post to social via Buffer.

We will be acting in terms of the Board procurement policy.

We are acting in terms of our policy on Loomio votes as this matter is urgent and cannot wait for the next Board meeting.

Purchases exceeding EUR 500 need a Board or working group resolution. They also need to reference funds on the budget. The CWG has an unspent allocation of GBP14000 at this time so there are sufficient funds.

Resolution:

This Board notes and supports the need for the Communications Working Group to purchase a subscription to Buffer to allow posting to social media. The Board authorises the payment of up to 700 EUR for this purpose. The funds are to be drawn from the CWG allocation in the budget.

Vote "Agree" to support the resolution above.

If you have any concerns please contact Craig Allan, Dorothea Kazazi or Mikel Maron on any private channel for further information.

Approved on 2025-05-06 with 5 votes in favour: Daniela Waltersdorfer, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Craig Allan, Maurizio Napolitano, Laura Mugeha.
1 abstained: Guillaume Rischard (If it's already in the budget, CWG can and should preferably decide by themselves to spend that money).
1 did not vote: Roland Olbricht.

Circular by Craig Allan.

2025/Res16 Approve active contributor membership application #2025051110000137

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

Did not pass on 2025-05-19 with
2 against: Laura Mugeha, Roland Olbricht (comment with link redacted, as it identifies the applicant).
5 did not vote: Craig Allan, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Guillaume Rischard, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Maurizio Napolitano.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2025/Res17 Approval of new contract with Martin Raifer (iD development)

Request from Personal Committee,

details and contract available at: https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board/-/issues/7911

Differences with the previous contract:

from "[...] The total number of days billed per calendar month may not exceed 11.5 days [...]" to "[...] The total number of days billed per calendar month may not exceed 13 days [...]"

from "[...] This contract starts on 1st July 2024 and is valid until 30th June 2025. [...]" to "[...] This contract starts on 1st May 2025 and is valid until 31st December 2025. [...]"

Approved on 2025-05-22 with 5 votes in favour: Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Roland Olbricht, Maurizio Napolitano, Laura Mugeha, Craig Allan (I have reviewed the new contract. I support the appointment of the contractor)..
 1 abstained: Guillaume Rischard (Abstaining for now. I'd like to know how the 13 days fit within the budget and within our current expenses, and would support if it does).
1 did not vote: Daniela Waltersdorfer.

Circular by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

Note:
1 Accessible to board members.

Secretary's report

Good morning, afternoon, and evening, depending on where you are joining us from! We’re thrilled to have members of the community joining us for this month’s meeting.

Core Software Development Facilitator

This month, we saw the launch of a new initiative by Minh, who has started publishing regular recaps of changes to the OSM website and API. These updates are now available on the OSM Community Forum and serve as a valuable resource for staying informed about ongoing improvements. In addition, a new blog post introduced him as the recently appointed Core Software Development Facilitator, offering a glimpse into his background and the strategic direction he will help shape for OSM’s technical infrastructure.

EWG microgrants

Excitingly, the Engineering Working Group has just announced the launch of their Microgrants program for this year. If you have an idea that needs a boost, we are giving up to £6,000 for its development. Be sure to submit it following the template before July 15th.

2025 board face-to-face meeting

We’re also looking forward to the upcoming face-to-face (F2F) meeting scheduled for this weekend, which will bring together key contributors to discuss priorities and future plans in person. We will keep you updated with our discussions and ways we can keep you all engaged.

iD developer's contract renewal

Lastly, we’re pleased to share that Martin Raifer’s contract for iD editor development has been extended for six months, until the end of the current year. Martin’s continued involvement ensures that one of OSM’s most widely used tools will keep evolving to meet the needs of our growing community.

Dani & Héctor

Treasurer's report

  • Income estimation: We have a very conservative estimation of income amounting to GBP 475,000 - before the OWG adjustment.
  • Budget estimation: We expect towards the end of the year to spend a little bit more than what we have as income (GBP 482,000, after the OWG adjustment). We have adequate reserves to handle this small increase and we're looking at getting a reasonable income this year. Having a profit would mean we would have to pay taxes, so we prefer to be as close to 0 as possible.
  • Corporate Members: We are in the progress of moving all Corporate Members to the new Corporate Membership pricing scheme.
  • Donations: We recently received a 1 BTC donation.

Notes about the development of the budget

  • The board had asked each Working Groups (WGs) to submit their estimated expenses for 2025.
  • The Operations Working Group (OWG) did not provide an estimated amount, so the board had allocated an amount based on their expected spending.
  • Creating a budget is a learning process. There is increased confidence now that the accountant has confirmed that the budget is reasonable.
  • The budget
    • is good enough to be presented and explained to members and donors.
    • is not expected to be perfect due to dealing with multiple currencies, which can be affected by political situations.
    • has been developed based on work by Guillaume (former Treasurer).

Current budget

Internal (board-only) link shared: https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board/-/issues/794 which includes a table with four columns:

  • Actuals: spending based on our Xero book-keeping platform.
  • Projected: total of expected expenses for a specific item at the end of the year
  • Working Group
  • Description
  • Method

Feedback from the OSMF accountant regarding budget

  • The current budget structure is fine.
  • Suggestion to consider the expenses of the operations working group as capital expenditures (capex).

Notes about the budget table

  • Proton donation: The budget projection accounts for the Proton donation as a one-time contribution.
  • BTC donation: We had 1 BTC donation at the beginning of the year. The budget projection accounts for this donation as a one-time contribution, at the current conversion rate.

Suggestions

  • Create a policy for managing budget line items that surpass the allocated amount.
  • Encourage all board members to provide feedback - feedback so far has been provided mainly by Guillaume and the accountant.
  • Indicate for each line item whether the spending is over or under the budget, following the format used in Harrison's spreadsheet.

Other points mentioned during discussion

Thanks were expressed to Proton, for their donation, as part of their 2024 fundraiser.

On the OSMF membership register

We definitely know who the members are and who are not, but it is not comfortable to get this information from the membership register.

On the board question about why the OWG came up with this quite sizable increase mid-year, when the SSRE was expected to help the finance plan for the year.

> Historically, Paul Norman (OWG volunteer) created the OWG budget.
> Grant Slater (Senior Site Reliability Engineer) has not created the OWG budget in the past and he's probably focused on more important things, like the membership register. It is best that he works on more pressing tasks.

On question by Dorothea if the current budget table, which was not shared during the meeting, can be published together with the minutes of the meeting for transparency to the members.

> The budget table on the board GitLab repository currently contains the income of individual people. We can adjust the table by summing lines and then publish it.

OWG's 2025 budget - request for GBP 20,000 increase

Motion to approve the GBP 20,000 requested by the OWG.

Proposed amendments

Proposed amendment by Roland Olbricht.
1. Use as a reference the budget (accessible to board only) at https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board/-/issues/794#note_2523225105, as Grant Slater (SSRE) has split several OWG items that the board does not split.
2. In the budget linked above, the board has 2 lines for "Computer sundries and peripherals" and "Computers Hosting Services", where we are technically overrunning the budget. The proposal is to use the projected value for these line items as the new budgeted values, to ensure that Grant can continue his work and the board doesn't have to be concerned about these lines being over the budget.

The proposed amendment is collating:

  • a couple of things into the "internet charges" line item and
  • three of the server items into "hardware and upgrades".

On the 2025 OWG budget

Guillaume commented that he would like to see the OWG minutes, and our actual finances compared to budget, as he is worried that OSMF might be fundraising less than expected. The link to draft minutes of the 2025-03-20 OWG budget discussion was provided by him, and it was mentioned that there is no capacity planning, which is not very reassuring.

On fundraising estimates

> Last year's value was used as a projected value.
> The current budget is very conservative and we have big reserves.
> Corporate Members: some Corporate Members are catching up on payments, with some in arrears and others paying in advance. Additionally, some are still adjusting to the new Corporate Member pricing scheme. We are also in contact with potential new Corporate Members, some of whom require paperwork.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • OSMF is currently not running any fundraising campaigns.

On publishing the budget

Roland will edit the budget table, summing some lines during the board face-to-face meeting, and will publish it.

Proposed amendment - Motion by Roland Olbricht

Via text: Use https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board/-/issues/794#note_2532777720 including using the projection for Sundries and Computer Hosting Services as new budget ceiling, releasing more money for OWG.

Explained:
1. Adjust the budget of the "computer sunrise in peripherals" from currently GBP 1,000 to GBP 4,277.94 British pounds, which is the projection.
2. Adjust the "computers hosting services" from GBP 1000 to GBP 1779.39.
3. Adjust the internet charges of GBP 18,980 as requested by the OWG.
4. Introduce a new line item to deprecate one fourth of the capital expenses of GBP 17,000 that we implicitly approve for various services.
5. Introduce a new line item for GBP 5,000 contingency to be spent on capital expenses.
6. GBP 2,000 for the OWG to use as a donation towards OSUSL, because OSUSL is running our servers in the US and they are in financial distress.

Proposed amendment 2

Motion by Guillaume Rischard to amend the proposal to remove the OWG proposed Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSUOSL) budget line, as OSUOSL is no longer in financial distress.

Points mentioned during discussion

  • OSUOSL has helped us through the years and there is not any problem with us giving them a gift or subsidy, which is probably far less than the value that they have contributed to us.
  • Keep the OSUOSL line
    • as we should show to the OWG that we should build trust with the OWG and show them that we trust their judgment.
    • in case the situation with OSUSL changes, and leave it to the OWG to decide if to spend the money or not.
    • as it is a small amount compared to the GBP 20,000 increase and the board has already communicated to OWG about providing the donation.

Board members were asked if anyone is seconding the proposed amendment, and as there was no one, it was decided to not put the proposed amendment to a vote.

Vote on motion by Roland

Motion by Roland Olbricht. Via text: Use https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board/-/issues/794#note_2532777720 including using the projection for Sundries and Computer Hosting Services as the new budget ceiling, releasing more money for OWG.

Explained: 1. Adjust the budget of the "computer sunrise in peripherals" from GBP 1,000 to GBP 4,277.94 British pounds, which is the projection.
2. Adjust the "computers hosting services" from GBP 1000 to GBP 1779.39.
3. Adjust the internet charges of GBP 18,980 as requested by the OWG.
4. Introduce a new line item to deprecate one fourth of the capital expenses of GBP 17,000 that we implicitly approve for various services.
5. Introduce a new line item for GBP 5,000 contingency to be spent on capital expenses.
6. GBP 2,000 for the OWG to use as a donation towards OSUSL, because OSUSL is running our servers in the US and they are in financial distress.

Approved on 2025-05-29 with 6 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht.
1 abstained: Guillaume Rischard.

Motion proposed by Roland Olbricht.

Welcome mat website translation and suggestions by community member

Andrés Gomez Casanova (Angoca) proposed making the Welcome Mat website translatable to other languages and move its GitHub repository from the OSMF GitHub repository to main OpenStreetMap repository, where it can be more easily translated.

The Welcome Mat website was created in 2018 and is distinct from www.osm.org. The target group was not individual mappers, but organisations.

Forum thread about the topic: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/how-to-integrate-a-translation-to-the-osm-welcome-mat/129882

On translation

The Welcome Mat website is currently in a content management system (CMS), which is not good for translation.

Andygol, a community member, has done a multilingual update of the Welcome Mat and changed the technology.

Suggestions

  • Before making changes, agree on the purpose of the website, to avoid a silent shift in content.
  • Maintain the website under the OSMF, as the audience is corporations and organisations.
  • Talk to the CWG to determine: i) if they want to coordinate the translation, ii) if there are additional tools that could be used to sort of source translations and iii) work on making the website available in different languages.

Dani had to disconnect ~ 46 minutes after the start.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • There are simple content management systems that can create static sites like the Welcome Mat. The wiki is not appropriate.

Comments by guests

  • by Minh Nguyễn: The CMS (both current and proposed) uses Markdown and is maintained in GitHub.
  • by Imagico: The idea of the community initiative was to make this a community project outside the control of the OSMF - whether board or CWG.
    • The board will mention this suggestion to the CWG.
    • The best that the board can do is to consult the CWG. The CWG will then decide whether to support the community initiatives or to act independently.

The dcision seemed to be

The board to ask the CWG to suggest methods for making the Welcome Mat website, and potentially other pages, more easily translatable.

Setting the 2025 Annual General Meeting date

The blocking item for setting the Annual General Meeting (AGM) date was CiviCRM. The board wants to ensure that CiviCRM will generate the correct list of eligible voters. A meeting was proposed by Dani to other board members, and it was mentioned that Grant Slater (SSRE) suggested Michael Spreng (MWG volunteer) to be included in the discussion, as he was working on CiviCRM.

Plan: Some of the board members to have a meeting with Grant Slater about creating a container for CiviCRM. Once everyone is happy with the software, then decide on an AGM date.

On a CiviCRM testing instance

  • The CiviCRM testing instance will not include any personal data.
  • It might take a month to get the testing instance up, and then it might be too late to set the AGM date.

Decision seemed to be

Treasurer's approval of the OSMF financial spreadsheet

This topic was not discussed.

Request for Finance Committee's update on expenses versus budget

Guillaume mentioned that he tried joining a Finance Committee meeting, but it did not take place. Additionally, that there have been no reports or minutes of the Finance Committee since October. Furthermore, he mentioned that the board was promised a spreadsheet comparing expenses to the budget.

> Roland's understanding is that the Finance Committee has been meeting as needed, rather than on a standing weekly schedule.
> The last Finance Committee meeting took place in February, with no minutes produced due to lack of results.
> It might not be a good use of time to figure out what has precisely happened in the meetings between October and February.
> Our accountant was a bit uneasy about some of the financial documents that had been produced, and she was more favourable of the draft budget created for this meeting (accessible to board members on GitLab).
> There might not be many meetings of the Financial Committee till we start to create the next budget.

Suggestions

  • Use the draft budget to cover our current budgetary needs, and if it doesn't see whether the financial committee would be the right venue to adjust the production of the budget.

Any other business

No other business.

Guest comments or questions

No comments or questions by guests during this section.

Next meetings

Face-to-face board meeting: 31 May and 1 June 2025 in Milan

Not open to observers.

Mid-month board chat: 15 June 2025 at 13:30 UTC

Not open to observers. About mid-month board chats.

Dates: See this Framagenda calendar (yellow dots), and the board meetings page.

Open board meeting: 26 June 2025 at 13:30 UTC

2025 dates of open board meetings: on this Framagenda calendar (green dots), and below.

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