Working Group Minutes/EWG 2025-08-22

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

These minutes are a draft.

Formal proceedings

Attendees:

  • Salim Badouin
  • Andrew Hain
  • Minh Nguyen
  • Roland Olbricht (joins late, at FLOSS)
  • Héctor Ortiz Ochoa
  • Emerson Rocha

Apologies:

  • Adam Hoyle
  • Tobias Knerr
  • Mikel Maron

Minutes of previous meetings

Draft minutes have been sent, but due to short notice are not yet voted for approval.

Actual business

Vector Tiles

Pending discussion where do we go from here. No further news for now. Board has not discussed about vector tiles going forward, but last year finances were on the red (see more on any other businesses point). Some feedback coming in, but it slowed down.

Microgrants

Everything goes forward according to plan. Salim met with jurors recently. More than 90% of ideas were scored already. New meeting with jurors next week.

Technicalities: some ideas are not related to Engineering. The jury still scores them but mentions that this microgrants round it is not the right place for it. When all scores are done, the jury will publish them for transparency. Salim suggests to have for next EWG meeting a more detailed discussion about microgrants, and earmark a big portion of the meeting for it.

Floss Fund

Hector is currently working on the pull request to have the file funding.json on openstreetmap.org. When the pull request is merged it can move forward. The pull request also needs to be moved to the Chef repository. Héctor contacted FLOSS/fund but the answer was not conclusive. Salim offers to help out.

OpenStreetMap Core Software Engineer

The hiring committee closed the job posting this week. The committee reviewed 56 candidates, and it proceeded with 4 to screening. The committee is currently scheduling the remaining interviews.

The committee will reach out to rejected candidates to let them known and not keep them hanging. Adam is leading out the technical interview from EWG's side. The Engineering Working Group should schedule some time for the new engineer to present themselves at the EWG in the future.

Minh is creating an onboarding plan. There is interest from the applicants whether there will be more OpenStreetMap Foundation or OpenStreetMap at large opportunities coming forward. It could be an opportunity to put together some resources. Minh is trying to point people to other opportunities in the ecosystem than can fit.

Next Projects to Commission / Projects Pipeline

Minh's focus has been on hiring recently. The roadmap is part of that. When hiring settles down we could share more details on roadmap, publish it to the community too. The work on the GDPR compliance is part of the roadmap, too.

Any other business

The spending of the Engineering Working Group is well within its budget. OSMF needs to find more funds to keep spending. The board will fundraise to increase the income side and not decreasing the spending, as the Foundation is using the money well.

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