Board/Minutes/2025-06
Chairperson's and Secretary's reports. Draft minutes to be added.
Date and time: Thursday 26 June 2025 at 13:30 UTC.
Time in your time-zone
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.
Participants
- Craig Allan
- Dani Waltersdorfer
- Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
- Maurizio Napolitano
- Laura Mugeha
- Roland Olbricht
Officers and Board Historic
Board member biographies Historic
Absent
- Guillaume Rischard (apologies)
Guests
- 9 guests, including Rebecca N. Jeannette (presenter)
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.
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Administrative
Approval of previous minutes
- 2025-05-29 Approved
Circular Resolutions
2025/Res18 Confirmation of informal decision: The date for the 2025 AGM to be 13 September 2025
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The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the OpenStreetMap Foundation is held every year and it includes detailed reviews of the finances of the Foundation for the previous year and the election of new Board members. The date for the AGM in 2025 is proposed to be Saturday 13 September 2025. The exact time and agenda will be decided later. The proposed date is based on Board member discussions and decisions from the Board Face-to-Face meeting in Milan, Italy. The primary motivating factor was the need to gradually move the date of the AGM toward the first half of the year as when we are in Europe we are required to hold the AGM within 6 months of the end of the financial year. A secondary factor was that holding an AGM as our last activity in December results in new Board members being isolated during the December shut-down period, whereas if we hold the election in September the new Board members will be able to begin the on-boarding process immediately and also will be able to meet existing Board members at the Manila SotM 2025. Basis for voting by Circular This decision is taken as a circular under 7.2 of the rules of order as it is a time sensitive matter. We need to start immediately with the preparations for the AGM, which take about 3 months to conclude. "7.2 Circular resolutions are used for time-sensitive issues, routine topics or minor updates to previously discussed items." Resolution: This Board resolves to confirm the recommended date of 13 September 2025 for the 2025 Annual General meeting of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. Vote Agree to support the resolution above. Vote Disagree to not support the resolution. You may give reasons for your decision. If you have any concerns please contact the secretariat (Dani, Héctor) for further information. |
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Approved on 2025-06-12 with 6 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Laura Mugeha. |
| Circular by Craig Allan. |
2025/Res19 Approval for refunding Dani Waltersdorfer the cost of a day ticket to attend SotM US 2025, to do a lighting presentation about the OSMF
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The cost is USD100 |
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Approved on 2025-06-19 with 5 votes in favour: Roland Olbricht, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Craig Allan, Maurizio Napolitano. |
| Circular by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz. |
Chairperson's report
| Topic presented by Craig Allan. |
Working on the move to the EU
The articles of Association have been prepared for member comment on the Wiki. We will be posting a shot Blog post inviting members to read and contribute to polishing the Articles of Association. We were pleased to receive a comprehensive comment from our legal/licensing working group which has slowed us down about two weeks as we prepared a draft reply and circulated the reply for board input. I expect we will make a formal invitation to members within about 7 to 10 days.
We would like to get the Articles of Association to a workable state before the AGM so that we can have members vote on it.
The UK Online Security Act
I have been preparing wiki pages on the UK Online Security Act. We are going to have to make sure that we don't publish pornography, content that is harmful to children, content showing cruelty to animals and people and content that glorifies weapons. Fortunately we have never had a problem with those topics so we are low risk. We do need to say what we are doing and put in place measure s that are designed to prevent online harm. I have also written to the moderation team with a view to seeing if they can assist in enforcement.
Revival of the Executive Directors Role
We have revived our work on the ED role. The Board members have been circulated the first of several documents on this. We raised this at the Advisory Board yesterday to warn and seek advice from our corporate partners. We will be putting it to our membership as well in the future. This is tied to the need to also employ another systems administrator - that process is not as advanced so the role needs to be defined and aligned with the role of the Reliability Engineer.
June Advisory Board meeting
We spoke to the Advisory Board yesterday about the plan to hold on small meetings with a lot of our corporate sponsors. This gives them a private hearing to see what they have to say about their relationship with OSM Foundation.,
2025 Board face-to-face meeting
We have a report back on the Board Face to Face. The report in is Draft form at the moment. I'm hoping to publish it in the next week.
2025 Annual General Meeting
And we have an Annual General Meeting coming up. That will include Board elections - I think at least three seats will be up for election. I encourage all members to think of standing for the Board - it is a lot of work but it is very important to the ongoing success of the OSM project.
Secretary's report
| Topic presented by Dani Waltersdorfer. |
Hello Everyone
Thank you for joining us today,whatever time zone you're in, we're glad you made time to be with us today.
We have a lot to update you on!
2025 Board face-to-face meeting
This past May, the Board met in Milan, Italy for their face-toface (F2F) meeting. Craig, the OSMF Chair, will be publishing a blog post soon… Unfortunately, I was not able to make it, but here's a bit of a summary based on what I've heard from my peers.
The OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) Board held its annual Face-to-Face (F2F) meeting in Milan, Italy, on May 31 and June 1, 2025, offering a rare and valuable opportunity for globally dispersed Board members to connect in person. Hosted at the creative design studio DotDotDot (many thanks to DotDotDot for hosting us!), the weekend was filled with strategic planning sessions, collaborative exercises, and open discussions on key topics such as the Annual General Meeting, data format expansion, website development, local chapter support, staff management, and the Bing Imagery crisis. The meeting also revisited the long-standing goal of appointing an Executive Director. Beyond the formal agenda, shared meals and informal conversations helped strengthen relationships. The Board extends heartfelt thanks to Allen Gunn (“Gunner”) for his expert facilitation, Dorothea for her meticulous logistics and documentation, and Dani and Héctor for their outstanding planning and coordination, all of whom made the event a great success.
2025 Annual General Meeting
A super important update to share with you all is that the Annual General Meeting Date has been announced: September 13, 2025. This means that nominations for new OSMF Board candidates are open. We really want to encourage members of the OSMF Community to apply. Representation and diversity are key! Please feel free to reach out to any of us if you have any questions.
New blog posts
We also have a couple of new blog posts to share with you. If you need us to send the links directly, let us know!
- https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2025/06/14/osm-foundation-board-elections-2025-nominate-yourself-by-july-5/
- https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2025/06/09/sotm-2025-tickets-now-available/
- https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2025/06/07/call-for-nominees-openstreetmap-awards-2025-in-manila/
Treasurer's report
| Previous reports during monthly board meetings and general meetings |
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| See the Treasurer's reports on the finances page. |
| Topic presented by Roland Olbricht. |
Draft minutes to be added.
Changes to the Moderation Policy
| Background |
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| Proposed motion: "Due to an increasing number of Bot and AI posts to the forums, the moderation team has made rules that allow any one member of the moderation team to use their judgement to remove suspicious posts and to ban the user that created the posts without reference to other Moderation team members. The Board supports the rapid removal and banning of posts by automated processes." |
| Proposed by Craig Allan. |
The board will probably vote on this issue.
Draft minutes to be added.
Trademark use request for the domain osm-apps.org - approved by LWG
| Background |
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| The Trademark licence subcommittee received the trademark request below on the domain osm-apps.org. The request was approved by the Licensing Working Group (LWG).
Hello OSMF-Team |
| Suggested by Dorothea and approved by Craig Allan. |
The board will probably vote on this issue.
Draft minutes to be added.
Dependable imagery
| Background |
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| Related to the discussion on community.osm.org about Bing imagery issues with JOSM and to the JOSM ticket #23913.
Previous board discussions
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| Proposed by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz. |
Draft minutes to be added.
Wikimedia Italia's enquiry about adding a fundraising banner on osm.org
| Background |
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| Wikimedia Italia (OSMF Local Chapter) reached out to the board to ask whether it would be possible to display a temporary banner on the main OpenStreetMap.org website, highlighting Wikimedia Italia's fundraising campaigns related to the OpenStreetMap project in Italy. The banner would be placed in the space below the search bar, where State of the Map (SotM) conference announcements are sometimes shown.
The board contacted the Operations Working Group (OWG) and their feedback was that:
The OWG also asked the board about input on changing the banner policy. During the June 2025 board meeting there will probably be a motion by one of the board members to allow recognised Local Chapters to show a banner for three months a year on osm.org on their territory, task the Engineering Working Group (EWG) with enabling geoip targeting, asking them in particular to facilitate ad blockers to distinguish fundraising banners if blocking them is desired, so that other banners (SotM, survey) don't get blocked. |
| Suggested by Dorothea and approved by Guillaume Rischard. |
The board will probably vote on this issue (see above).
Draft minutes to be added.
Presentation - OSM Rwanda
| Previous presentations and about this section |
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| See Monthly_Board_Meetings/Presentations. |
| Presentation arranged by Laura Mugeha. |
10 minute presentation by Ecomappers. 5 minutes for questions and comments.
Draft minutes to be added.
Any other business
Draft minutes to be added.
Guest comments or questions
| Open to all OSM Foundation members (Become a member of the Foundation). 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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No comments or questions during this section.
Next meetings
Open board meeting: 31 July 2025 at 13:30 UTC
2025 dates of open board meetings: on this Framagenda calendar (green dots), and below.
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Mid-month board chat: 17 July 2025 at 13:30 UTC
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