Working Group Minutes/EWG 2023-08-09

Formal proceedings

Attendees:

• Salim Baidoun
• Andrew Hain
• Tobias Knerr
• Roland Olbricht
• Emerson Rocha

Apologies: Adam Hoyle

Membership updates

Robert Koeze has stepped down from the Engineering Working Group. The group therefore needs to elect a new chair. The election is going to take place in the next meeting.

The other inactive members which have not responded are now to be removed, too.

Actual business

Sovereign tech fund

The application has been sent. No feedback from the receiving agency is expected before end of September. So the topic is put pending any reply for further action.

Vector Tiles

Paul has delivered the detailed proposal shortly before this meeting. The proposal shall be reviewed the next time.

Data Model Work

Roland apologizes for not collecting the perceived points of opposition.

A worthwhile observation is that having the data model changes implemented would help with the current discussion around vandalism/impersonation on the forum: the shortcomings of the existing data model obscure the partly subversive action that otherwise could simplier be pinpointed on the objects itself.

Microgrants

The discussion is deferrred because too few people have read Emerson's email in depth. In principle it looks like the old templates can be improved and reused.

There has been the idea to give suggested topics to channel ideas. However, it is clarified that the purpose of this call are project ideas from outside.

There are in principle project ideas by the EWG itself, but these can be better pursued through dedicated call for bids. As the mute user bid has shown, there is still a learning curve. But without pursuing this, the EWG and subsequently the OSMF will stay unable to unblock development with money even if they want to.

Salim volunteers to re-read the Microgrants report to identify problems of the Wiki to select a better platform for our new round.

Maxar

Maxar has retracted the imagery amid being of no longer funded from a third party for it. Maxar has pointed to repeated abuse of the central key for OpenStreetMap as the official reason. The EWG does not have personal contact, so it seeks to ask other bodies.

Additional project ideas

Presentation by Emerson

Emerson Rocha is reporting back on whether there is potential to extract code and structure from MediaWikis.

Rocha changed the subject for presentation to "ABox vs TBox distinction on OpenStreetMap". The presentation shall be made available by PDF in the OpenStreetMap Wiki after the meeting.

It is understood that the structure is either too complex or too general, depending on the formalization, to use it in general. However, there are likely subsets that might bring benefit to bring them into the OSM data model.

Action item: The Engineering Working Group will discuss by mail potential low hanging fruit.

Overture Maps (discussed after the end of the meeting)

Andrew volunteered to an analysis on Overture Maps data and see if there are any areas we could be addressing.