Board/Minutes/2025-09

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This was the first public meeting of the new board after the September board election.

Date and time: Thursday 25 September at 13:30 UTC.

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

Acronyms

Participants

  • Brazil Singh (intermittent connection issues)
  • Craig Allan
  • Dani Waltersdorfer
  • Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
  • Maurizio Napolitano (joined ~ 12' after start)
  • Laura Mugeha
  • Roland Olbricht

Officers and Board Historic
Board member biographies Historic
Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.

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.

Voting for Chairperson

Craig asked the rest of the board members if anyone had an issue with him running the voting process. No objections.

Candidate: Craig Allan, nominated by Roland Olbricht.

There was no voting.

Voting for Treasurer

Candidate: Roland Olbricht, nominated by Craig Allan.

Voting for Secretary

Candidate: Dani Waltersdorfer, nominated by Roland Olbricht.

Maurizio had previously mentioned to the board members via the board Element channel that he was interested in the Secretary role. The board members waited for Maurizio to join the meeting.

Maurizio Napolitano joined ~ 12' after start.

Voting for non-officer roles

Finance Committee chair

Candidate: Maurizio Napolitano

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Need to increase fundraising.
  • Meetings of the Finance Committee could take place one every two weeks.

Personnel Committee chair

Candidate: Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

Trademark licence subcommittee representative

Candidate: Craig Allan.

Advisory Board liaison

Candidate: Maurizio Napolitano.

Open Source Initiative representative

Candidate: Laura Mugeha.

Maurizio indicated that he was also interested, but withdraw his nomination as Laura was interested too.

Deputy Secretary

Candidate: Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

Dani thanked Héctor for being a Deputy Secretary the previous year, as he helped her with the Secretary tasks when she got sick.

Working Group liaisons and back-up liaisons - summary

  • The board aims to have two representatives in each Working Group, responsible for facilitating communications between the board and the working group.
  • The role is diplomatic - liaisons do not have a vote in Working Group decisions.
  • Liaisons cannot chair Working Groups.

It was noted that board members have more freedom as members of Working Groups, rather than as Working Group liaisons. Liaisons do not take part in Working Group decisions, and their active participation is limited, as they are representing the board. Liaisons focus on communications between the Working Group and the board.

The backup liaison joins Working Group meetings when the main liaison cannot do so.

Working Group Main liaison from the board Back-up liaison from the board
CWG - Communication Working Group Dani potentially Brazil
DWG - Data Working Group Maurizio Craig
EWG - Engineering Working Group Maurizio Héctor
LWG - Licensing Working Group Craig Maurizio
LCCWG - Local Chapters and Communities Working Group Laura Brazil
MWG - Membership Working Group Laura Roland
OWG - Operations Working Group Héctor Roland
SotM-WG - State of the Map organising committee Dani Laura

Details below.

Communication Working Group liaison

Decision: Communication Working Group (CWG) liaison Daniela Waltersdorfer. Back-up: potentially Brazil Singh.

Backup liaison: potentially Brazil. Brazil, who is a CWG member, noted that he doesn't want his active CWG participation to be affected by becoming a CWG liaison.

Data Working Group liaison

Decision: Data Working Group (DWG) liaison Maurizio Napolitano. Back-up: Craig Allan.

Later during the discussion:

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • The DWG does not want a board liaison.

Licensing Working Group liaison

Decision: Licensing Working Group (LWG) liaison Craig Allan. Back-up: Maurizio Napolitano.

Backup liaison: Maurizio.

Local Chapters and Communities Working Group liaison

Decision: Local Chapters and Communities Working Group (LCCWG) liaison Laura Mugeha. Back-up: Brazil Singh.

Membership Working Group liaison

Decision: Membership Working Group (MWG) liaison Laura Mugeha. Back-up: Roland Olbricht.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • The MWG has a single member.
  • Craig offered to help.

Operations Working Group liaison

Decision: Operations Working Group (OWG) liaison Héctor Ochoa Ortiz. Back-up: Roland Olbricht.

Other points mentioned during discussion

State of the Map organising committee] liaison

Decision: State of the Map organising committee (SotM WG) liaison Daniela Waltersdorfer. Back-up: Laura Mugeha.

Dani had to disconnect ~ 32' after start.

Engineering Working Group liaison

Decision: Engineering Working Group (EWG) liaison Maurizio Napolitano. Back-up: Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • EWG tasks: making decisions on spending money on software development and getting the Vector Tiles completed. Software development coordination is now done by Minh.

It was also noted that if Brazil, or another board member, in the future would like to become main liaison for a Working Group, it is possible to make changes during any board meeting.

Administrative

Approval of previous minutes

Circular Resolutions

2025/Res23 Contract signing of OSM Core Software Engineer

The board notes and approves the contract signing with Pablo Brasero Moreno (under the company PabloBM Consulting Limited, registered in England, company number 12200009) as a contractor with the title OpenStreetMap Core Software Engineer. The payment comes from the Sovereign Tech Fund, and the rate has been discussed with the Personal Committee and Core Software Development Facilitator. Details on the contract can be seen on board internal emails.

Approved on 24 September with 5 votes in favour: Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Brazil Singh, Laura Mugeha, Craig Allan, Maurizio Napolitano.
2 did not vote: Roland Olbricht, Daniela Waltersdorfer.

Circular by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

See the blog-post "Apply to be the OpenStreetMap Core Software Engineer".

Any other business

SotM 2025 meeting of board members

  • Some of the board members will meet during SotM 2025 in Manila. This is early after the election, which helps to define the work for this year.
  • There was a tradition of holding the elections in December, which meant there as a six week gap where nothing happened due to the holidays. Moving the board election date earlier is more efficient and helps with planning the 2026 budget.
  • Board elections in the future will be moved to June or July, due to European Union regulations about holding a meeting withing 6 months after the end of the financial year.

Board meeting start time

Suggestion to start the meetings earlier, as it would help Roland and Dani. The times would also have to work for other board members, such as Brazil, who is in Bangladesh, and Craig, who is currently in California.

Decision: The Secretary to look into scheduling the meetings earlier.

Guest comments or questions

Thanks and suggestion for recruitment of more members during SotM 2025

SeverinGeo (guest),

  • thanked board members for their work,
  • wished them good luck for this year and
  • suggested that they could ask people to join OSMF and vote more, after the decrease over the last years, refering to imagico's last post.

Next meetings

The new day and time of the recurring public board meetings and board chats will be set by the Secretary after the September board meeting.

See the Monthly Board meetings page, where board meetings are listed, to get a subscription link to have future board meetings automatically added to your calendar.

Once set, the meetings will be added to this Framagenda calendar (yellow dots), and the monthly board meetings page.

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