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Board/Minutes/2025-11

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Participants

["talk" time*] Director's name

  • [01'] Brazil Singh
  • [16'] Craig Allan (Chairing)
  • [09'] Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
  • [04'] Maurizio Napolitano
  • [10'] Roland Olbricht
  • [00'] Laura Mugeha

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

Absent

  • Dani Waltersdorfer (Apologies)

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

Guests

  • 7 guests

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

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Administrative

Approval of previous minutes

Circular Resolutions

2025/Res31 The board to approve signing the Open Letter to Google Regarding Mandatory Developer Registration for Third-Party App Distribution ("Keep Android Open")

The board to approve signing the Open Letter to Google Regarding Mandatory Developer Registration for Third-Party App Distribution ("Keep Android Open"). The letter and additional background information can be found at https://keepandroidopen.org/.

Approved on 2025-11-06 with 6 votes in favour:
- Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
- Laura Mugeha
- Maurizio Napolitano
- Brazil Singh
- Craig Allan (OSMF supports free and open software. The Google security measures to control developers for the Android platform (as Apple does) will erect a barrier to distribution of free, open software on Android. We can't judge the full impact of their measures yet, but we can say that it appears to be a step backwards.)
- Roland Olbricht (After reading both sides (Google and F-Droid as the main stakeholders), the authors of the letter have a point. There is no reason why developers that publish through F-Droid should sign off Google's terms and conditions. The basic reason against this would be that the Foundation has not a general political mandate. Given how difficult it is to have an OpenStreetMap based app on Android Auto, Google's terms and conditions well might impede OpenStreetMap based apps).
1 did not vote: Daniela Waltersdorfer.

Circular by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

2025/Res32 Approve active contributor membership application #2025072910000038

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

Unanimously approved on 2025-11-06 with 7 votes in favour:
- Roland Olbricht
- Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
- Daniela Waltersdorfer
- Maurizio Napolitano
- Brazil Singh
- Craig Allan ("[username redacted]" is well known by the Board to be a significant and valued contributor to OSM, most recently in organising the [event redacted] in [country redacted]. I note however that the application itself is not fully suitable in that it references only self-written contributions. I'd much prefer to see some third party evidence)
- Laura Mugeha (Voting in support based on mapping and non-mapping contributions; [name redacted] is an active mapper in [country redacted], supporting [organisation redacted] and the local OSM community and was also one of the lead organizers for [event redacted]).

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2025/Res33 Approve active contributor membership application #2025071610000302

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

Approved on 2025-11-06 with 6 votes in favour: Roland Olbricht, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Maurizio Napolitano, Craig Allan, Laura Mugeha.
1 abstained: Brazil Singh.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2025/Res34 Approve active contributor membership application #2025102310000097

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

Did not pass on 2025-11-09 with 3 abstentions:
- Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
- Roland Olbricht (I'm totally inconclusive here. I've not found any activity beyond the isolated event for this year. For sure good faith with the past records, but strictly speaking too little)
- Craig Allan (I would like to see links to reporting of activities that "[username redacted]" organised, or a personal recommendation from someone well known to the community. For me it is not enough for the applicant to describe their own activities - the activity must be verifiable by others. "[username redacted]" probably has plenty of suitable activity, but lacks the documentation. I'd encourage "[username redacted]" to improve the data provided and then re-submit the application).
 - 4 did not vote: Brazil Singh, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Maurizio Napolitano, Laura Mugeha.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2025/Res35 The board to approve signing the EU Sovereign Tech Fund Public Support Letter

The board to approve signing the EU Sovereign Tech Fund Public Support Letter by Open Forum Europe, directed at the European Commission. The letter and additional background information can be found at https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/.

Approved on 2025-11-10 with 5 votes in favour:
- Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
- Laura Mugeha
- Craig Allan
- Maurizio Napolitano
- Roland Olbricht (It is all in all good. Note that just asking for money is often humiliating. In this case, the initiative includes parties from the industry (who are usually considered to pay the taxes) and Gaia-X who know how to secure huge swathes of money ("cloud" buzzword with the right timing), and some parties with reputation. All in all good company for a fairly unspecific ask for money).
2 did not vote:
- Daniela Waltersdorfer
- Brazil Singh

Circular by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

2025/Res36 Approve active contributor membership application #2025100810000526

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

Approved on 2025-11-15 with 6 votes in favour: Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Laura Mugeha, Brazil Singh, Roland Olbricht, Craig Allan (Translation is an important non-mapping contribution to the OSM movement.)
1 did not vote: Maurizio Napolitano

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2025/Res37 Approve active contributor membership application #2025110910000041

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

Approved on 2025-11-16 with 6 votes in favour: Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Maurizio Napolitano, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Laura Mugeha, Roland Olbricht, Craig Allan (Translation is an important non-mapping contribution to the OSM movement.)
1 did not vote: Brazil Singh.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2025/Res38 Approve active contributor membership application #2025110710000277

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

Approved on 2025-11-16 with 5 votes in favour: Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Maurizio Napolitano, Laura Mugeha, Roland Olbricht, Craig Allan (I am personally aware of this contributors valuable non-mapping contributions to the OSM movement.)
1 abstained: Daniela Waltersdorfer
1 did not vote: Brazil Singh.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2025/Res39 Approve active contributor membership application #2025110810000113

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

See the note below.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

Note: We received two different applications with the same content from the same person. This applications was a duplicate of #2025100810000526.

2025/Res40 Approve active contributor membership application #2025111110000036

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

Approved on 2025-11-20 with 5 votes in favour: Brazil Singh, Maurizio Napolitano, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Roland Olbricht.
2 did not vote: Craig Allan, Daniela Waltersdorfer.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2025/Res41 The board to approve signing of a Letter of Intent with CloudFerro S.A., regarding cooperation to improve the quality of open data

The board to approve signing a Letter of Intent with CloudFerro S.A., regarding cooperation to improve the quality of open data. The background and letter can be found on the internal issue #823.

Approved on 2025-11-20 with 4 votes in favour:
- Laura Mugeha
- Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
- Brazil Singh (I support signing the LOI as it is a non-binding agreement that allows us to explore cooperation with CloudFerro while ensuring no financial or legal obligations for OSMF).
- Maurizio Napolitano (From my side I am in favour of signing the Letter of Intent. I don’t see anything negative in it - it is a non-binding document, it creates no legal or financial obligations for OSMF, and it represents an important first step in building a formal relationship with CloudFerro and, indirectly, with the ESA ecosystem. That said, I think it’s important to underline that the real challenges do not lie in this Lol
1 - Financial and operational management
2 - Continuity of the ESA orthoimagery service)
1 abstained:
- Roland Olbricht (The letter requires confidentiality, most likely as boilerplate phrase. But we want to share with our members at least a broad overview of what is going on. I.e. must find a common statement that we seek to make more imagery at least in Europe accessible or so).
2 did not vote:
- Craig Allan
- Daniela Waltersdorfer

Circular by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

2025/Res42 The OSMF Board to authorise Amanda McCann to sign the documents from Michelle Heydon handed over by the treasurer on 2025-11-15

The OSMF Board authorises Amanda McCann to sign the documents from Michelle Heydon handed over by the treasurer on 2025-11-15.

Approved on 2025-11-26 with 6 votes in favour: Roland Olbricht, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Brazil Singh, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano.
1 did not vote: Craig Allan

Circular by Roland Olbricht (Treasurer).

Note: Amanda McCann is a former OSMF Director and Michelle Heydon is OSMF's bookkeeper.

Chairperson's report

No report due to 3 days of travelling.

Secretary's report

The Secretary was not present during the meeting.

Treasurer's report

Thanks were expressed to Michelle Heydon (OSMF bookkeeper) who is working on the communications with the bank. There is a lot of work behind the scenes, which will keep the Treasurer busy until the end of the year. The board will discuss options about dealing with bureaucracy.

2025 fundraising campaign

Topic proposed by Héctor.

Dani (Secretary) has been emailing the OSMF Corporate Members. She had one informal meeting with a Corporate Member representative so far.

We will remind people about fundraising, but there won't be a fundraising campaign right now.

State of the Map Europe 2025: feedback from the OSMF session

  • The board is communicating very little.
  • There was surprise that OSMF runs on so little money.
  • Strong encouragement for an annual fundraising campaign.

Plan

  • Publish a report. Have a one page document on OSMF's spending in the past year, one page on the proposed budget for next year, including information on how to donate and thanking donors.
  • Set up an annual fundraising campaign. Talk with the Communication Working Group (CWG) in January about this.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Roland will try to work on the report in the next days.
  • Craig offered to help with the report, if it gets created on a collaborative online document.
  • A lot of drama has been resolved behind the scenes.

Investigate moving OSMF out of the UK, and into the EU

Topic proposed by Héctor and Roland.

Issue: We are multinational, so we have to take a lot of legal considerations. However, we are a small entity, and even if we find lawyers working on a discount, they are beyond our planned budget and it is impossible to get things moving forward.

Suggestion to create a subsidiary in Belgium soon

Suggestions:

  • Create a subsidiary in Belgium right now, with a subset of Directors and start moving OSMF's assets as we see fit, before solving the issue of OSMF's dissolvement. This is within our reach.
    • The suggestion was made by Michelle Heydon (OSMF bookkeeper), who pointed out that this typically does not require too much work.
  • Tackle the topic of OSMF's dissolvement, once most of the assets have been moved.
  • Roland to determine whether Belgium has a requirement for at least one of the Directors of Belgian organisations to be a Belgian resident.

On creating subsidiary or a separate organisation
With the subsiary:

  • We have easier ownership structure, as the UK entity owns the Belgian one.
  • We won't have to deal with the question of what happens if we have different membership on the Belgian organisation, than the UK one. The membership was never expected to align between the two entities, but building a Belgian membership would take a lot of time.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Some countries require the organisations to have a representative living in the country. Belgium does not seem to have such a requirement.
  • No reliable way to get UK legal counseling for OSMF's move out of the UK and into the EU.
  • Fundraising: Moving to EU will help with applying for EU funds.

UseOSM - proposal to grant trademark licence

Topic proposed by Héctor.

UseOSM was awarded an Engineering Working Group (EWG) Microgrant. Héctor contacted the Licensing Working Group (LWG) about the project's name, after attendeding an UseOSM presentation some months ago. The LWG reviewed the application and mentioned to the board that they were positive on the trademark use, as it is good use of the OpenStreetMap brand and they are promoting OpenStreetMap.

Vote to approve the signing of the Project Licence and Domain Application by Spatialnode Inc. to use UseOSM and useosm.org

The board to approve the signing of the Project Licence and Domain Application by Spatialnode Inc. to use UseOSM and useosm.org.

Approved on 2025-11-27 with,

  • 5 votes in favour: Brazil Singh, Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht.
  • 2 did not vote: Laura Mugeha (was disconnected during the voting), Daniela Waltersdorfer (absent during the meeting).
Proposed by Héctor, seconded by Roland.

Any other business

Board face-to-face meeting in 2026

Topic proposed by Roland.

Face-to-face meetings are very important, as they deepen the level of interaction between board members, who only meet via the videoconferences, and help in building better working relationships.

Brazil Singh was the only new board member after the 2025 board election, and some of the board members met him during the State of the Map 2025 conference in Manila.

Suggestion: Have the board face-to-face meeting again in Milan, as in 2025.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Availability: Maurizio has a very busy schedule until the end of May, as he is also a coach. A meeting in Italy, where he lives, would help him, and he offered to make the venue arrangements.
  • Cities:
    • Milan was a bit cheaper than Frankfurt, and the venue (arranged by Maurizio) was good.
    • The board is loking for big hubs, to facilitate board members' flights.

Action item: Héctor to set-up a poll for board members' availability in the first three months of 2026.

December board meeting scheduling and holiday circular-free period

Suggestions

  • Reschedule the public board meeting for Thursday, 18 December 2025.
  • Have the circular-free period from Friday 19 December to Monday 5 January.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Need to pass the 2026 budget during the December board meeting.

OSMF's participation in European funding-related calls

Topic suggested by Maurizio.

Maurizio will create a draft on OSMF's participation in European funding-related calls, and share it with the board and the OSM community for feedback. It is important to develop a strategy for EU funding applications.

Guest comments or questions

Contibuting to OSMF-related software, after obtaining own funding

Mateusz Konieczny (former board member, guest) plans to contribute to OSM-related software, such as iD, during the next year and is looking for related funding. Mateusz asked what are the recommended steps and who would he have to ask for permission if he wants to contribute to iD, and has his own funding for such purpose. Mateusz plans to coordinate with the iD maintainers and to help by reviewing pull requests, as the iD maintainers will have to review his own pull requests.

> You can contribute to the project, if you get your own funding.
> Mateusz should email the EWG and the iD editor maintainers.

Mateusz mentioned that he is funded by NLnet for his work on StreetComplete and asked whether Héctor is aware of any list with similar funding opportunities

> Suggestion to contact Héctor via email, as he had connection issues.

Next meetings

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Open board meeting: Pending

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Meeting adjourned 42 minutes after start.

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