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Board/Minutes/2026-09

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Participants

  • Craig Allan
  • Dani Waltersdorfer (joined 6 minutes after start)
  • Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
  • Maurizio Napolitano
  • Laura Mugeha
  • Roland Olbricht

Absent

  • Brazil Singh (apologies)

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

Guests

  • 2 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

Motivation

Having selected a legal firm (Arvay Finlay LLC) and counsel, Julia Riddle, we now need to pay a deposit to secure their services. The amount they will require is approximately CAD 10000, or EUR 6177 at today's rates. I suggest allowing some extra by authorising spending up to the limit of the Medium category, which is EUR 10000.

Resolution:

This Board resolves to pay up to EUR 10000 to Arvay Finlay LLC to cover legal fees and expenses that arise in the resolution of the [redacted] and [redacted] matter.

Approved on 2026-08-12 with 6 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht.
1 did not vote: Brazil Singh.

Circular by Craig Allan.
The LCCWG1 has completed its review of the Local Chapter application32 from the Associació Catalana de l'OpenStreetMap3 (covering the Catalan Countries region) and recommends approval. The two-week community consultation closed on 16 April 2026 with no objections raised.

Per the Local Chapter process, the board's role at this stage is to vote on the LCCWG recommendation. If approved, the next step is signature of the Local Chapter agreement.

Application file: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Local_Chapters/Applications/Catalan_countries
Community consultation: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/osmf-local-chapter-application-associacio-catalana-de-lopenstreetmap-catalan-countries/142800

Approved on 2026-08-21 with 4 votes in favour: Daniela Waltersdorfer, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht.
3 did not vote: Brazil Singh, Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

Circular by Laura Mugeha.

1 Local Chapters and Communities Working Group
2 Local Chapter application for Catalan Countries
3 https://osmcatala.cat/

2026/Res16 The board to approve covering the costs of Dani Waltersdorfer's travel to State of the Map Latam 2026

The board to approve to cover the costs of Dani Waltersdorfer's1 travel to State of the Map Latam 2026.

Approved on 2026-09-09 with 5 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Roland Olbricht, Maurizio Napolitano (Considering where the next SotM will be held I think the presence of an OSMF member is very important).
1 did not vote: Brazil Singh.
1 abstained: Daniela Waltersdorfer.

Circular by Héctor Ochoa Ortiz.

1 Director.

Comment on some circulars having few votes

This is because once a circular gets four votes in favour, it is approved. This, for example, was the case with the Catalan circular.

Chairperson's report

OSMF move to the EU

Onboarding with the Belgian lawyers is being finalised. Then, the new entity can get created.

Next step: drafting the constitution, which needs translation into Dutch and alignment with Belgian law.

  • We already have a draft.
  • The finished draft will be made public for members' comments for 4-6 weeks.

Canadian lawsuit

A person in Canada registered copyright over a cycling trail and is suing OSMF for showing the trail on the map.

Next step: court hearing in the second week of October.

Current status: The trail is no longer displayed on osm.org, as someone deleted it.

SotM2026

Esri meeting

Board members present at SotM 2026 met with people from Esri.

1. Esri is planning a competition on telling stories with maps for SotM 2027.

The competition:

  • will not be a mapping competition,
  • will not require use of Esri products - participants can submit pdfs.
  • will likely be similar to the one run with OSM-US for SotM US 2026.

2. Esri is planning on donating a server in Johannesburg for Panoramax images.

  • Africa currently has no Panoramax server.
  • The African community needs to be consulted.

TomTom meeting

Board members present at SotM 2026 met with people from TomTom.

TomTom

  • is interested in contributing to the Esri storytelling competition, though the form of their contribution is not clear yet.
  • provided their Madrid offices to host the board face-to-face 2026 meeting.
  • is sponsoring the international SotM, as Esri.

Wikimedia Foundation meeting

Board members present at SotM 2026 met with people from the Wikimedia Foundation.

Collaboration on technical matters, including scraping, is ongoing.

There was discussion of a possible collaboration on corporate data provision. Wikimedia has a special deal for corporate users of their data, and they would like to package OSM in their offering.

  • There are no obvious blockers at this stage, as licensing will stay the same.
  • Discussion is needed on what Wikimedia can do for us, and what we can do for them, before a decision is taken.
  • We are cautious.

Comments by Roland

AI companies have taken a largely permissive approach to scraping content, regardless of copyright. Wikimedia found leverage through contracts with such companies. The basic idea is to figure out whether we have a better lever towards companies if we negotiate certain things together with Wikimedia (Enterprise).

  • AI companies do not try to evade the cost, but they think in patterns that we aren't used to as an organisation.
  • It's definitely worth talking to a lot of people before deciding which is the right negotiation strategy.
  • There are no planned changes for the licence or the data.
  • Wikimedia will not have special rights.

Advisory Board revival

Maurizio is handling the Advisory Board revival, with input from the board. The board is treating this as a priority.

Enquiries about borders and boundaries

We receive several enquiries about borders and boundaries.

Suggestion: update the 2013 policy on disputed territories. This is a sensitive issue, requiring consensus with the board, the DWG and the wider community.

CiviCRM - Membership database

A duplicate of the membership database has been created for development purposes. There is budget for a consultant to fix the current system or replace it. The current system has a lot of technical debt and is not well documented.

Updates by Laura

  • The Membership Working Group (MWG) contacted an external consultant, so there might be an update in the next few weeks.
  • The MWG might be able to use their budgeted amount this year.

OSM wiki

The wiki does not have a management structure, dedicated group of people looking after it or any policy framework, despite having multiple dedicated volunteers doing valuable work.

Suggestion: Explore creating a more formal structure or working group for the OSM wiki.

Post-meeting note: Related to the question on governance of the wiki and to post-meeting comments.

CWG revival

The board is trying to revive Communication Working Group (CWG), which has been through a period of paralysis.

Secretary's report

Dani mentioned that her draft report had content which has already been covered by Craig in the chairperson's report. It included updates from the State of the Map 2026 conference, the meetings there, the action items with some of the sponsors and thanks to the amazing SotM WG. Laura will also send the annual thank you email to the State of the Map organising committee, as is done every year.

Dani will try to finish the Secretary's report and share it on the OSMF website.

Treasurer's report

There is uncertainty on:

  • future Bitcoin donations
  • the Sovereign Tech Fund
  • Microgrants status
  • other EWG projects.

Around 0.5 million in the bank.

Predictions for the end of the year are not reliable at this point - we could end up with EUR 100K over or under, but we will most likely have a surplus this year. In the previous 2 of 3 years we expected a deficit, but ended with a surplus.

Comments by board members

BTC

  • It is positive that we can now easily convert them, without relying on Grant's account.
  • Craig is working on a draft policy on BTC due diligence.
    • We are not a financial police - we will do a proportionate checkup.
    • Perhaps the donations are from a source in the open source community which did not want to be identified.

Fundraising

  • Dani is working on fundraising - lately contacted Swiftly.
  • Corporate fundraising is progressing slowly.
  • Suggestion: Have an annual fundraising campaign with specific goals, providing a weekly-updated spreadsheet with numbers to the CWG.

End of year numbers

  • A surplus is not always a good thing, as it may reflect under spending and not achieving our mission. OSMF has a history of under spending.
  • We could not spend money as fast for useful things. This is an encouragement to be bold in spending money for useful things where we can, and particularly with regard to the people employed or contracted.

Financial year 2025: Financial accounts for review and approval

  • Exhibiting a surplus.
  • The numbers look sound.
  • Research needed on outstanding amounts.
  • At the end of the year we didn't have access to bank accounts, so there were things we couldn't pay, or check whether we had received.

Vote on accepting the financial accounts

Motion: Accept the financial accounts, profit_and_loss.pdf and balance_sheet.pdf, as the financial records for fiscal year 2025 to submit to the Companies House.

Approved on 2026-09-10 with 5 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht.
1 abstained: Daniela Waltersdorfer. 1 did not vote: Brazil Singh (absent).

Motion by Roland, seconded by Laura.

Bank of Ireland account access

Topic proposed by Roland.

We had lost access to the Bank of Ireland accounts last November. Roland regained access in January to the EUR account.

Suggestions

  • All EU based board members and Craig be able to contact Bank of Ireland regarding the accounts.
  • The two people with online banking access to be Michelle (OSMF bookkeeper) and Roland.

Vote on acceptance of instructions

Motion: The board resolves to authorize Bank of Ireland to accept instruction of any one of
  • chairperson and board member Craig Allan
  • board member Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
  • board member Maurizio Napolitano
  • board member Daniela Waltersdorfer
  • treasurer and board member Roland Olbricht
  • accountant Michelle Heydon

to access the BOI accounts, given that by other laws and contracts they are under sufficient control to not abuse this access.

Approved on 2026-09-10 with 6 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht.
1 did not vote: Brazil Singh (absent).

Motion by Roland, seconded by Dani.

Vote on acceptance of instructions

  • For phone or in person bank visits: any of the six individuals will be able to act on the Foundation's behalf, once authenticated by the bank.
  • For online banking: there are stricter rules, involving two factor authentication (2FA). They probably allow only one person to have online access, and Roland prefers that person to be Michelle.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • The board members signed some documents required by the bank during SotM 2026.
  • There were previously difficulties in processing payments, when Roland is unavailable to approve them.
  • The Bank of Ireland once phoned Roland's personal landline to verify a transfer, despite 2FA already being completed.
  • The board members have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of the foundation, and misuse of access would be an offence under the UK Companies Act.
  • Phone banking is a very slow process.
Motion: The board resolves to authorize accountant Michelle Heydon and Treasurer Roland Olbricht phone and online banking access.

Approved on 2026-09-10 with 6 votes in favour: Craig Allan, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano, Roland Olbricht.
1 did not vote: Brazil Singh (absent).

Motion by Roland, seconded by Dani.

Question by guest

Question by Gregory Marler (guest), on whether a task should be given to Dorothea to make sure board on/off-boarding notes include informing bank(s) about changes to authorised people.

> Dorothea has created on-boarding documents, but banks now require copies of ID documents and proofs of residential address. (answered during the "any other business" section).

Gregory noted that he just wanted to make sure "banks" gets added to Dorothea's notes. It's easy to forget these things, which could cause another lockout.

Post-meeting note: Dorothea has not been authorised to contact banks.

European project LLMosaic

Topic proposed by Héctor, presented by Napo.

Call HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-HERITAGE-06

An earlier blog post stated OSMF's openness to collaborating on European projects.

OSMF got contacted by an Italian linguistic team of a consortium that will apply to European call which focuses on minority and small community languages. The person who contacted us to collaborate wanted to create a map where minority languages are spoken and to help with finding language-speaking service providers. Napo highlighted that our assets are: OpenStreetMap, the infrastructure, the data, the relation with the community and the State of the Map conference, as a venue to present project outcomes.

OSMF's involvement

After discussion, Napo proposed that OSMF:

  • will provide the infrastructure, data
  • will participate with Napo's "OSMer in residence" pilot project. The idea is that OSMF will help organisations in the project to identify knowledgeable OSM people, who will act as a bridge between the researcher(s) and the OSM community. These people will get paid.

Monetary aspects

The grant, if awarded, will be €200,000 + €50,000 for infrastructure and travel, and has a deadline in two weeks. The money could be used for the OSMer in residence project, and to improve development, e.g. for Vector Tiles.

Napo suggested using a lump sum payment model, but asked for the funds upfront to pay the "OSMers in residence" participants quickly.

Board member comments

  • Héctor: Fits OSMF's goals, including diversity, and talks about linking lexical resources with OSM to have linguistic cartography.
  • Craig: Particular relevance to Africa, given its high number of languages.

Next steps

  • Fill the description of OSMF.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Napo has shared the proposed document with the board. A part of the proposal is directly on the European Commission website, so not visible to the board.
  • Napo listed himself, Héctor and Dorothea as contact persons.
  • External data should not be added directly to OSM, only linked through identifiers such as Wikidata IDs.
  • Any new tagging must go through a community discussion process.

Any other business

Thanks to Grant Slater and Minh Nguyễn

Thanks to Grant Slater and Minh Nguyễn for fixing the Mediawiki skin of osmfoundation.org.

Guest comments or questions

Thanks to SotM WG

Question by Gregory Marler (guest) on whether the board would like to note a big thanks to the SotM Working Group, as from afar it looked like it was an awesome event in Paris.

> Thanks to the State of the Map organizing team for organising such a great conference.

Question on governance of 'the wiki'

Question by imagico (guest) to Craig if he could clarify whether his indications of taking an interest in governance of 'the wiki' refers to the OSM wiki or the OSMF wiki/website.

> Both. Craig would like to know how it happens, and if there's any mission at all, because he is not in contact with any such team and he has matters he would like to raise. If there's no team that's coherent, then we should probably make it so.

Next meetings

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.

Mid-month board chat: 24 September 2026 at 12:00 UTC, unless rescheduled

Not open to observers. About mid-month board chats.

Dates: See this Framagenda calendar (yellow dots).

Open board meeting: Thursday, 15 October 2026, at 12:00 UTC, unless rescheduled

Dates of open board meetings: on this Framagenda calendar (green dots), and the board meetings page.

Add future board meetings to your calendar'

If you want future board meetings to be automatically added to your calendar, you can subscribe (please do not download the file) 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:

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  • Both public and non-public meetings are added to this calendar. The later ones have a note in their description about being non-public.

Closed session

The Treasurer proposed a closed session at the end of this meeting.

Offering new contracts for 2027 to the STF contractors

Mentioned during the open part: The board wants to give to the three Sovereign Tech Fund contractors security and draft a motion in order to contract them in 2027. Contract payments are subject to confidentiality and cannot be discussed during the open part of the meeting.

Comment on personnel contract terms during the open part of the meeting

Comment by imagico (guest) that personnel contract terms were historically always open.

Comments by board members:

  • OSMF publicly discloses the contractors, but does not mention the amounts for regularly contracted people for privacy reasons. However, the budget contains the aggregate of the amounts of the three Sovereign Tech Fund contractors.
  • The board will not disclose ongoing negotiation positions with contractors.
  • The contract terms should be public.

Post-meeting comments

OSM wiki governance

Below are post-meeting comments by Mateusz Konieczny, who wrote to the board after the meeting as an individual OSM wiki contributor (Mateusz is also a former board member and OSMF contractor), in response to the OSM wiki section of the Chairperson's report.

Please also see the follow-up discussion on the OSM wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Wiki#Wiki_management?

Topics related to the OSM wiki can be publicly posted

Note that to make comment in one of places above you will need OSM Wiki account. For sad technical reasons it is separate from the regular OSM account.

Discussion interface is quite weird, for other sad technical reasons. Most of Wikipedia's technical manuals, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines will apply also to out wiki, though non-technical rules mentioned there are Wikipedia-specific.

If secrecy is needed and contact channels listed above are not appropriate, something could be set-up, but so far it was not needed and hopefully it won't be needed.

> "The wiki does not have a management structure, dedicated group of people looking after it”

This is not really accurate. OSM Wiki has a group of people with account management rights and a group of people with the right to block OSM wiki accounts, delete pages and restrict editing of specific pages. We also have people that are actively looking after OSM Wiki. Yes, without being a formal group, but it is not changing their dedication. Wiki has no formal management structure, but it is unclear why having one would be an improvement or solve one of problems we have.

> policy framework

If establishing some policies would help, then feedback on which specific ones seem missing would be welcome. Including explanation why formally establishing them is needed, and would be worth more than negative effects of doing this.

Such policy changes can be proposed at contact channels listed above.

But personally I would treat bureaucracy and formal processes as sometimes necessary evil. Not as an exciting adventure that should be repeated as often as possible.

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