Board/Minutes/2025-06

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Draft minutes.

Date and time: Thursday 26 June 2025 at 13:30 UTC.

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

["talk" time*] Director's name

  • [23'] Craig Allan (Chairing)
  • [08'] Dani Waltersdorfer
  • [02'] Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
  • [05'] Maurizio Napolitano
  • [01'] Laura Mugeha
  • [10'] Roland Olbricht

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

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

Circular Resolutions

2025/Res18 Confirmation of informal decision: The date for the 2025 AGM to be 13 September 2025

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.

Approved on 2025-06-12 with 6 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Laura Mugeha.
1 did not vote: Guillaume Rischard.

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

The cost is USD100

Approved on 2025-06-19 with 5 votes in favour: Roland Olbricht, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Craig Allan, Maurizio Napolitano.
2 did not vote: Daniela Waltersdorfer, Guillaume Rischard.

Circular by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

Chairperson's report

The written report below was provided by the Chairperson after the meeting. There have been some minor edits and addition of links.

Working on the move to the EU

The Articles of Association (AoA) have been prepared for member comment on the Wiki. We will be posting a short 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 Annual General Meeting (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 measures 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 Director's Role

We have revived our work on the Executive Directors (ED) role. The Board members have been circulating 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 (AB) yesterday about the plan to hold 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 meeting. The report is in Draft form at the moment. I'm hoping to publish it 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.

Additional points mentioned during the meeting

The Executive Director position will cost a lot.

Meetings of board members with Corporate Members

  • Corporate Members help in additional ways to their Corporate Membership fees, e.g. Microsoft provides pull requests for osm.org
  • The board decided to have meetings with Corporate Members on the Advisory Board, in the hope:
    • that it will result in more help provided, e.g. with imagery.
    • build a closer relationship. It was noted that the board should also build a closer relationship with the members.
  • The proposed meetings with Corporate Members on the Advisory Board will probably include 2-3 board members, not the whole board.
Question regarding the meetings

Question by imagico (guest) whether the one-on-one meetings with the corporate members are considered as part of their role as advisory board members and hence covered by OSMF policy regarding that.

> The meetings are not directly related to their roles in the Advisory Board.
> The board will also talk with Corporate sponsors who are not on the Advisory Board.
> This is open-ended and not linked to or consequential to any formal process.

The Chairperson asked the rest of the board members whether they agree with his answer, and there was no objection.

Secretary's report

The written report below was provided by the Secretary during the meeting. There have been some minor edits and addition of links.

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-to-face (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!

Treasurer's report

Not much news after the budget adjustment for the Operations Working Group (OWG).

Fundraising drive

Necessity to run a fundraising drive at the end of the year, as last year's formal expenses exceed the formal income by a lot. The drive will be coordinated with an ask to the corporate members or other donors, if we proceed with hiring an executive director. The decision on the drive will be made by the next board.

On comment about board not working on the OSM tech stack

A community member expressed surprise about the board members not working on the tech stack of OSM. In light of this, Roland is considering posting about the work of the Treasurer. Roland encouraged other board members to write about their board work, which will be useful for future board candidates.

Changes to the Moderation Policy

The moderation policy on Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence was created by the moderation team, and the board should support their work.

Concerns
Concerns were raised by community members on the forum, in some cases using AI to improve their translated messages, regarding the change to the moderation policy. The moderation team replied that they are not targeting such translated messages, but AI posts which are not adding value to the conversations.

Concerns were also raised about the moderation team having a right to immediately take down posts. It was noted that the moderation team's internal process of deciding on a takedown would likely take a day or more, but the board members would like the moderation team to have the right to take a post down immediately without further consultation. It was also added that every take down is appealable to the board.

Example of removed post from the forum
"Field mapping efficiency on modern mobile tools" by "Kevin Mitnick".
"I have been actively contributing to OSM and wanted to start a discussion about improving field mapping workflows. It's worth considering options, like shop and iPhone 15 online and <link to a shop>. Looking forward to hearing your experiences."

The rest of the text could not be statistically determined to be different from an OSM text, but it was free of content.

Suggestion

  • Encourage the moderation team to provide some sample posts which would get removed from the forum due to not complying with the updated policy.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Problematic posts on the forum are taken down very fast, so most people are not aware of the spam and AI problem.
  • Request an edit of the moderation policy text, to include the process which was mentioned on the forum and any clarifications.
    • The board to report back at the next meeting about what they have found and fixed.

Vote on changing the Moderation Policy regarding AI

"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."

Approved on 2025-06-26 with 6 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht.
1 did not vote: :Guillaume Rischard (absent)

Motion proposed by Craig Allan. Seconded by Roland Olbricht.

Question regarding the mention of a "Moderation Working Group"

Question by imagico (guest) on whether the moderation team is considered to be a working group.

> The moderation team is a board-appointed committee, under the Local Chapters and Communities Working Group (LCCWG).
> The board hasn't appointed people on the team for over a year and will look into if anything needs to be done.

Trademark use request for the domain osm-apps.org - approved by LWG

The OSM apps catalog project displays applications that use OSM data. The creator wants to help people to switch to OpenStreetMap. The catalog is currently hosted on their own subdomain and they would like to buy the domain osm-apps.org. They have submitted a domain licence application to OSMF and ask for the board to consider it.

Suggestion

  • Delay the vote and create a circular.
  • Vote now, as the Licensing Working Group (LWG) has approved the trademark application.

Vote on granting a trademark licence for the osm-apps.org domain

Motion to approve the granting of a license with the owner of osm-apps.org domain for the use of the OSM trademark.

Approved on 2025-06-26 with 6 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht.
1 did not vote: :Guillaume Rischard (absent).

Motion proposed by Craig Allan. Seconded by Roland Olbricht.

Dependable imagery

This may to some extent have been preempted by the June Advisory Board meeting. Mikel Maron (Advisory Board coordinator) announced that:

  • the iD token for the Bing imagery will be used by other apps, and
  • we will continue to have access to Bing imagery for probably next year, but there is uncertainty beyond that time-frame.

Thanks were expressed to Microsoft for providing access to the Bing imagery and their extended support.

Suggestions

  • The board aims to increase the number of imagery sources, to avoid relying on a single provider for global imagery coverage.
  • Maintainers of OSM editors to get in touch with the EWG, in order to ensure that their tokens to access Bing imagery remains valid for the foreseeable future.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • The board has considered asking the European Space Agency for use of their imagery.
  • There is a huge range of images taken by local governments, provinces, smaller states, to which we might have access via some editors. Example: South Africa imagery, accessible via the iD editor.

Wikimedia Italia's enquiry about adding a fundraising banner on osm.org

In Italy you can make donations which are tax deductible. Wikimedia Italy (Local Chapter in Italy) gets a six-figure income from such donations from individuals.

Wikimedia Italia proposed to the board to add a banner on osm.org promoting their fundraising efforts, shown to Italian citizens.

Points to consider

  • There is a risk that we will get added to ad-blocker lists, if we are too liberal with displaying banners. This point was raised by the Operations Working Group (OWG).
  • There is a risk that people will stop paying attention to banners, if we display them too frequently.

Suggestions

  • Use osm.org for OSMF fundraising.
  • If we manage to display the banner only to Italian speakers in Italy, and not in other countries, then the OWG can show localised banners in other places.
  • We have to be very conservative about what we allow.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Not seeing this request as advertising.
  • The board is very cautious about allowing any advertising on any OSM websites.
  • The option to suggest banners will be restricted to people within the organisation, not to third parties.
  • This is not advertising and not a change in the OWG banner policy but an internal notification. Rather, we could not find another place to make people aware of the possibility to donate to Wikimedia Italia.

Presentation - OSM Rwanda by Ecomappers

Presentation by Rebecca N. Jeannette (Ecomappers).

Comments by board members

  • It is always very encouraging to hear what is going on in the field.
  • A small country like Rwanda, with 13 million people, has an enormous OSM community.
  • Appreciation was expressed for the photos documenting the activities and events of OSM Rwanda.
  • The partnership with the government is very impressive.

Question on becoming a Local Chapter

Question by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz (board) on whether they have considered becoming a Local Chapter.

> Yes, we'll try our best to become a Local Chapter.

Any other business

EWG microgrants

Topic proposed by Dani Waltersdorfer.

People were encouraged to apply for an EWG Microgrant and to reach out to the Engineering Working Group (EWG).

Link shared: Engineering Microgrants 2025: Program Announcement.

Board members' presence at regional SotMs

Topic proposed by Dani Waltersdorfer.

Board members would like to attend regional State of the Map (SotM) conferences, if the OSMF budget allows it.

Guest comments or questions

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.

Add future board meetings to your calendar
If you want future board meetings to be automatically added to your calendar, you can subscribe to the following iCalendar link. Instructions on how to do that depend on which calendar software/service you use. The link is provided for your convenience. Please note that:

  • It might not work when Framasoft servers experience problems.
  • You might get delayed updates, depending on how often the calendar service from your side syncs/checks for updates.
  • Both public and non-public meetings are added to this calendar. The later ones have a note in their description about being non-public.

Mid-month board chat: 17 July 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.

Meeting adjourned 51 minutes after start.

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