Working Group Minutes/EWG 2026-07-10
Formal proceedings
Attendees:
- Andrew Hain
- Emerson Rocha
- Jake Low
- Minh Nguyễn '(OSM core software development facilitator)
- Roland Olbricht (chairing this meeting, also on the OSMF Board)
- Héctor Ochoa Ortiz (also on the OSMF Board)
Apologies:
- Adam Hoyle
Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.
Minutes of previous meeting
2026-06-26 Approved.
Proposed by Roland, seconded by Héctor. Roland abstained. No objections.
Actual business
iD tagging schema project initiative
| Background |
|---|
| On 2026-02 the EWG approved Mateusz Konieczny's (former board member) proposal to work on iD triaging & improvement of the iD tagging schema.
The contract ended on 2026-05-15. |
Outstanding payment
Mateusz's second contract has been approved and he is still waiting for payment on the first one.
Mateusz payment has been delayed, as Roland needs to determine if Mateusz prefers the payment in Zloty or EUR, as it will be made from the Bank of Ireland. The contract is denominated in GBP.
Roland plans to make Mateusz's payment on Monday.
Action item: Roland to ask Mateusz if he has a currency preference between zloty and euros.
OSMF payments
Today Roland paid Minh and Dorothea for May.
Planned payments for Monday:
- Mateusz Konieczny
- Paul Norman for April
- Geochicas
Microgrants
| Relevant links |
|---|
Andrew updated the EWG microgrants timeline to reflect Tom Hukins' Map review project withdrawal.
Microgrant payments
- Roland on 2026-05-29 emailed a list of recent payments at that time. Content below.
- StreetComplete was surprised that they got paid for more milestones than expected. Most other Microgrant projects were paid for work already completed.
Payments in May 2026
- Waterway Map: paid
- OSM Apps Catalog: payment made to Markus Peloso, 2350 EUR
- UseOSM: payment made to EMMANUEL JOLAIYA, 4862 EUR. Both milestones have been paid, but the second milestone has never been reached.
- StreetComplete: payment to Tobias Zwick, 5500 EUR. Tobias notified Roland that he will probably not be able to complete the last milestone in time. Full amount paid.
- Field verified OpenStreetMap data: no milestone recorded. Feedback that it was not EMMANUEL JOLAIYA's project, but Sp. Woodcock /HOTOSM. https://github.com/osmfoundation/ewg_bidding/issues/24 We have paid.
- OSMSG: Roland tried to contact the OSM users, but couldn't find any.
- Map Review Team: Tom Hukins, claims no milestone was reached, despite milestones recorded on the
timeline. Tom has asked for the Microgrant to be cancelled in 2026-07.
Suggestions
- Update the table to show the completed projects.
- Ask for updates from not completed projects, such as Field verified OpenStreetMap data.
Other points mentioned during discussion
- Unclear if the EWG had made a formal agreement to proceed with these payments.
Héctor updated the table, according to the information in Roland's email with the payments.
Action items
- Andrew to email the Microgrant recipients, in order to find out whether they reached further milestones.
- EWG to announce success of Microgrants, after getting updates from participants.
Vector tiles
| Background |
|---|
| On 2025-07 OSMF announced the deployment of Vector Tiles and featured a Vector Tiles layer on osm.org, using the Shortbread schema (originally developed by Geofabrik), and the VersaTiles colorful style.
Work on Vector Tiles is by Paul Norman (also OWG volunteer and former board member). |
Feedback on the new layer
There have been a few technical comments on the new layer regarding text-sizing on mobile screens. Might be related to the client-side rendering library.
Paul's contract and pending payment
Paul's payment is pending, due to Roland's backlog. Additionally, there is no active contract, which poses an accounting documentation risk.
Roland plans to pay Paul's May invoice on Monday, and then the EWG will renew Paul's contract, similar to how Martin Raifer's (iD maintainer) contract was renewed.
FLOSS Fund
| Background |
|---|
| In October 2025, the OSMF was awarded USD 30,000 by the FLOSS/fund of Indian company Zerodha, to support OSM development. As of 2026-06, the process of submitting tax documents and updating the agreement is ongoing.
Mateusz Konieczny (former board member) had notified the OSMF board about the fund and can suggested that OSMF could apply. The board had forwarded the suggestion to the Engineering Working Group (EWG). Funding requests from projects were made through a publicly accessible funding.json file, and the OSMF's funding.json file is here. Selected excerpts from the https://floss.fund/ website: About FLOSS/fund Amount Who can apply Currently, our focus is on supporting existing, widely used, and impactful projects to specifically contribute to their sustainability. Very new projects or projects with minimal usage are not considered for the time being. Evaluation process Currently, our focus is on supporting existing, widely used, and impactful projects to specifically contribute to their sustainability. Very new projects or projects with minimal usage are not considered for the time being. Our internal investment committee evaluates projects based on broad criteria such as value, impact, criticality, and innovation. Once we have a reasonable grasp of the process end-to-end, from evaluation to disbursement of funds, we plan to set up a community voting system and an external investment committee from the FOSS world to help us evaluate and select recipients. What is expected from a project that receives funding How to apply Applications that come through to the FLOSS/fund will be indexed and published on the dir.floss.fund directory / portal, making them publicly discoverable by anyone interested in supporting projects. Related resources Internal OSMF board GitLab ticket: https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board/-/issues/786 |
The payment from the FLOSS Fund is pending. They emailed to inform us that there will be a delay.
Sovereign Tech Fund Projects
Work is continuing on moderation zones, notifications, GPS traces. Continuing to collaborate with MapLibre on vector map migration.
Minh just got back from UN Open Source Week (separately funded by STF). He will provide a summary of the discussions during the next EWG meeting.
Fundraising for an additional year?
The board is considering raising funds to extend the STF projects for another year. Roland hopes that the board can make an early statement on whether work can continue. There will probably be some discussion during the public board meeting.
GDPR
There was some work in March on https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/6866 by a contributor who was hoping to get into Google Summer of Code (GSoC) but was not selected. No progress since then.
iD Development
Martin Raifer's (iD developer) contract has been renewed. No further updates.
Imagery
It was noted that Esri imagery appears more up to date than Bing in some locations. Bing remains the only source of imagery for large parts of the world.
Any other business
Kathy Snider's enquiry about ways to help as a volunteer
Jake has replied to Kathy Snider's enquiry.
Meeting adjourned 39 minutes after start.