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Board/Minutes/2026-03

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Date and time: Thursday 26 March at 13:00 UTC - Countdown.

Minutes approved during the 2026-04-30 board meeting.

DST related: If DST has recently changed for you, please check your local time for this meeting.

Location: Video room https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/dor-2cd-qah-rim or https://meet.libreops.cc/OSMF_board_meeting if the first one is not accessible

Acronyms

Participants

["talk" time*] Director's name

  • [01'] Brazil Singh
  • [23'] Craig Allan (Chairing)
  • [22'] Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
  • [06'] Roland Olbricht
  • [00'] Maurizio Napolitano (Napo) (joined 57' after start)

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

Absent

  • Laura Mugeha
  • Dani Waltersdorfer

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

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.

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Administrative

Approval of previous minutes

Circular Resolutions

Chairperson's report

Moving OSMF to the EU

I want to give a brief update on our progress toward establishing a Belgian company as OSMF's primary operating entity.

The background is straightforward. Post-Brexit divergence between UK and EU data protection law creates real operational risk for a data based organisation like ours, and establishing a proper EU legal presence mitigates that risk. It also opens the door to EU funding streams and government procurement relationships that are currently out of reach.

We have moved from thinking about this to actually doing it. In March we identified and met with two specialist firms near Brussels: Impact Advocaten, who will handle the legal formation, and De Kleine Prins, who will handle the accounting. Both are NGO and non-profit specialists. Impact Advocaten is led by Marleen Denef, a leading figure in Belgian nonprofit law and a professor at KU Leuven. We held introductory meetings with both firms in Brussels on 17 March and we feel that the firms are a good fit. We are going to try both firms and see how we work together. Obviously, the option to end the relationship is always there. On-boarding paperwork from both firms has arrived and we are working through both sets of documents this week.

There is still a lot of work ahead. The formation of a non-profit company will takes time and a lot of paperwork. Banking arrangements also need to be arranged. We are tentatively looking at Triodos, which already serves the UK OSM Foundation.

We are still in the early days but the direction is clear and we are moving on this. I will keep the board and community informed as things develop.

Comments by board members

Craig was thanked for his work.

On getting a bank account: We are still far away from getting a bank account in Belgium.

On legal advice regarding the move

  • The first round with lawyers has failed.
  • The new people are experienced and understand what we need. The contacts in Leuven have an IP specialist, who was on call. Napo also knows an IP specialist.
  • If it doesn't work, we will find someone else.

On OSMF

  • We are special as an organisation, as we are owned by 1000 members.
  • We rely on the database rights, which is a special niche.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • OSMF's characteristics which impede the move are still present.
  • This is important work, but there is no guarantee that it will lead somewhere.

Secretary's report

The Secretary could not attend the meeting.

Treasurer's report

On 2026 OSMF budget

Apologies that the 2026 budget is not yet published, while it was approved in the end of January. The board could look at the process in order to speed things.

Post meeting note: the 2026 budget is now published.

Fire EU bank account status

  • This is one of OSMF's back-up bank accounts.
  • Status: Account not accessible - in contact with Fire EU to regain access.
  • Documents' request: Fire EU recently requested docuemts proving each board member's residential address. The request has taken the board by surprise and took some time to collect the documents - now submitted.

Board members were thanked for providing the requested documents.

Bank of Ireland account status

  • This is OSMF's main bank account.
  • Status: operational.
  • Risk: The Treasurer is currently the only person who can sign documents. The Treasurer plans to fix this after we get access to the Fire EU bank account.

Suggestions

  • To document email communications. Situation much better right now, since we document most of them on GitLab.
  • Create a handbook on how to change banks and include information such as the documents typically requested by banks.

Local Chapter application for Colombia

The application went through the Local Chapters and Communities Working Group (LCCWG) and Héctor has been personally reviewing the documents supporting the Asociación de Cartografía Colaborativa de Colombia (AC3) local chapter application - which all seemed correct.

Local consultation

See: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/ac3-aplicacion-a-capitulo-local-de-la-osmf/138115/1

Strong support by the local community.

OSMF membership consultation

See: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/osmf-local-chapter-application-ac3-colombia/138371

There was a comment that the annual fees for Asociación de Cartografía Colaborativa de Colombia (AC3) membership are on the higher side.

> Andreas Gomes (AC3, present at this meeting) responded that AC3 has fixed costs that they cannot avoid, such as banking fees and Chamber of Commerce fees, but they have reduced rates for active contributors and students.

LCCWG recommendation to the board

The LCCWG proposes to the board the approval of AC3 to become the OpenStreetMap Local Chapter (LC) for Colombia.

No clarifications were asked.

Vote to approve AC3 as the OSM local chapter for Colombia

Motion: The board approves AC3 to become the local chapter for Colombia.

Approved on 2026-03-26 with,

  • 4 votes in favour: Brazil Singh, Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Roland Olbricht.
  • 3 did not vote: Daniela Waltersdorfer (absent), Laura Mugeha (absent), Maurizio Napolitano (absent during the vote, joined later).
Motion proposed by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, seconded by Roland Olbricht.

Congratulations were given to AC3.

12th call of NGI Zero Commons (NLnet) Fund

  • There were previous NGI Zero Commons (NLnet) Fund calls. OSMF did not apply, but there were applications from people in the OSM ecosystem.
  • Current NGI Zero Commons (NLnet) Fund call ends in a few days.
  • The call repeats every 2 months. The next call will have an application period probably from April to June.

Decisions which need to be made

  • Whether to apply
  • The proposal

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Craig looked at the work done by Paul Norman (Vector Tiles) and Sarah Hoffmann (Nominatim) and mentioned to them that they could apply. There hasn't been a response yet and we shouldn't put pressure to them.
  • Good way to raise money.
  • It probably will be relatively easy to get funding. if we can find projects that are suitable.
  • Several OSM projects have been funded by this fund. See: https://nlnet.nl/project/index.html

Hiring a new Systems Operator

Topic proposed by Craig Allan.

The Operations Working Group (OWG) has been really busy in the last months fighting scrappers. Most of Grant Slater's (Senior Site Reliability Engineer) time has been fighting fires. The attacks put a lot of strain on our and other people's infrastructure (e.g. Wikimedia Foundation).

The board members have been discussing having a fundraising campaign in 2026 and they would like to focus on having a second sysadmin as the most pressing issue and an achievable goal. Plan to have the position filled by the end of the year and keep the position for the following years.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Enormous step forward, as it will help with resiliency.
  • QGIS also puts a lot of pressure on the OSMF tile service.
  • Nominatim is also attacked by scrapers.
  • Competing with getting an Executive Director - but getting a second sysadmin has priority.

Any other business

Advisory Board meetings in 2026

Topic proposed by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

There have not been Advisory Board (AB) meeting for a while, even though there should be two annually. So far, Mikel Maron (Advisory Board coordinator) has been running the meetings, as he has been the person mostly in contact with companies. Mikel mailed the board a couple of months ago, asking the focus and direction the board wants for the Advisory Board in 2026. Héctor recently contacted Mikel, who still expects an answer before scheduling new AB meetings.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • We need the Advisory Board running.
  • There is a board GitLab ticket for discussion.

Decision

The board to discuss the topic during the April board chat and potentially for the face-to-face board meeting in June.

Meeting with the OSM US board

OSM US Inc. (Local Chapter) had reached out to the OSMF board a couple of months ago, asking if the board wanted to participate in the 2026 Geospatial World Forum. At the time, there was also discussion on community.osm.org regarding the proposal to make the Global Entity Reference System (GERS) an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) community standard. Héctor proposed a meeting of the OSMF and OSM US boards.

Potential topics

  • Overture Maps: see how OSM US is working with Overture and perhaps how OSMF could have a collaboration with Overture.
  • Executive Director: What steps did OSM US take to get an Executive Director.

The meeting was scheduled to take place in a couple of weeks.

Héctor was thanked for making the contact, as it is good for OSMF to be in contact with Local Chapters.

Question on whether the meeting will be public

imagico (guest) asked whether the scheduled meeting with OSM US board will be public.

> We have not talked about that. We can propose it to OSM US, if they want to make it public or keep it private.

Guest comments or questions

On AI scraping

rphyrin (guest) commented that regarding the sysop and AI-scraping problem, if you want to help directly, the OSM ops team is open to people who want hands-on sysadmin/DevOps experience with mentoring. They're also very active in the #osmf-operations IRC room.

On the Local Chapter application process and the AC3 application for Colombia

Feedback from SeverinGeo (guest) regarding the Local Chapter application process and the documentation.

The page with the supporting information does not include a summary of what this application is about, i.e,

  • how old is the association
  • what are its goals
  • how it runs
  • how many members it has (post meeting note: this is actually mentioned)

People need to dig into the supporting documents for the local chapter application.

On the Local Chapter application for Colombia
SeverinGeo noted that

  • there was no bad feedback from the community consultation - just a discussion about the fees.
  • The association was created late in 2024 and the application was made in May 2025, so only six months after its creation.
  • The association seems to have some community activities, but they are proposing paid services. Having such as an association as a Local Chapter does not reflect what the OSMF does.

In addition SeverinGeo mentioned that,

  • there are no standards in the approval of Local Chapter applications by OSMF, as the Map Uganda Local Chapter application, which also had a mix of community activities and paid services, was rejected after a long review process.
  • The result of the application process seems to depends on who is on the board.
  • There are no public documents stating what an OSMF chapter should be.
  • It seems that for new OSM organisations, when they are very active in a country, the next step is to become a Local Chapter, irrespective of their internal situations.

Suggestions by Severin

  • Standardisation/harmonisation of what an OSMF Local Chapter should be.
  • The Local Chapters should provide an overview of their OSM activities and critical decisions they took

Comments from board members

  • Severin raised a lot of points.
  • The processing of Local Chapter applications has changed over the years - currently applications are mostly handled by the Local Chapters and Communities Working Group (LCCWG).
  • There are several Local Chapter applications which have not been approved, such as
    • the UMBRAOSM (União dos Mapeadores Brasileiros do Openstreetmap) application to become the OSM Local Chapter for Brazil. They were internal community disagreements, so the LCCWG decided to not go forward.
    • associations which have applied, but they were not answering for months to questions by the LCCWG asking for clarifications.

On the Local Chapter application for Colombia

  • This seems to be the first Local Chapter application being proposed by the LCCWG to be voted by the board.
  • The AC3 association has organised State of the Map (SotM) Latam 2025 and SotM Colombia and received the permission from OSMF to use the OSM marks for these conferences. No community issues were reported to the board.
  • The Colombian OSM community was really supportive of the AC3 local chapter application.

Decision seemed to be: The board will answer SeverinGeo via email.

Discussion on the chat

imagico (guest) commented that the main difference is that with Uganda a critical community discussion happened on osmf-talk while with Colombia it did not. SeverinGeo replied that, yes this is the issue with the community forum, so many forum topics that you have to check by yourself. imagico agreed and added that - as Severin said - the lack of easily readable documentation makes assessment difficult for the community. This was already the case with Uganda, of course.

On whether OSMF has a mechanism to periodically evaluate the activity status of OSM Local Chapters

rphyrin (guest) asked whether OSMF has a mechanism to periodically evaluate the activity status of OSM Local Chapters. rphyrin also added that it would be useful to have a periodic online space where local chapters worldwide could share what they have done recently and outline their short-term plans for the near future.

Comments from board members

  • The LCCWG has not done any reviews of Local Chapter activities, but also has not heard any complaints.
  • If a complaint was received regarding any of the chapters, then the LCCWG would be the one to review that.
  • There's a requirement in the Local Chapter agreement that the chapters send an annual report to the board, but the board has no power to enforce it.
  • They used to be regular presentations of Local Chapters and OSM communities during the public board meetings. These were not very formal.

Suggestions

Discussion on the chat

SeverinGeo (guest) suggested inviting established OSMF local chapters to the board meetings for reporting. Dorothea added that OSMF has a dedicated page for Local Chapter activity reports, but needs more recent documents.

Maurizio joined 57' after start.

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The public part of the meeting ended 1 hour after start.

Closed session

The board decided to have a closed session at the end of this meeting. The reason provided was "Human Resources issue". The topics discussed are listed below.

Martin Raifer's contract renewal

Martin Raifer is the iD editor maintainer.

OSMF move to the EU - Belgium accountants

The closed part of the meeting lasted 6 minutes.

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