OSMF overview 201812

• Providing background information to some of the topics related to Working Groups and some discussed during Board meetings in 2018.
• Incomplete list.
  

Launched/Completed/Approved

Completed - New data center Some of our servers have moved to a new home, Equinix Amsterdam, as Imperial College in London wanted to reclaim some space for offices. We’d like to thank Imperial for our time together and the Operation Working group volunteers for all the hard work going into managing these server moves!

We continue to be thankful to University College London, and Bytemark who are still generously providing hosting for some other keys servers, not to mention our many Tile Cache hosts around the world. Read the blogpost: Server moves: Goodbye Imperial. Hello Equinix Amsterdam.

Completed - Moderation queue A long-requested solution for the spam and abusive content in diaries, the map, user notes and other services. From the website user's perspective, this is basically a "Report" button next to everything. The goal is to offer moderators a queue of reports from every service on the OSM website, allowing them to ignore or act on a report.

Launched - Membership fee waiver program The Membership Working Group (MWG) is working on the implementation of a membership fee waiver program. It is based on the board resolution and the subsequent vote at the 2014 Annual General Meeting. People are able to apply through the fee waiver program for an associate membership, if paying the fee constitutes an unreasonable burden to the member because of lack of a suitable money transfer facility. The MWG is working on finalising and publishing the procedure for financial hardship situations - currently the board is responsible for accepting any related applications.

• Fee waiver form is now live.
• The fee waiver program is for "an active contributor" (as defined here): "a natural person (whether using a single or multiple accounts) who has edited the Project in any three calendar months from the last 12 months (i.e. there is a demonstrated interest over time)".
• The program has been accepted by the Board (2018 Jan), provided that the text modifications are minor.

Related board discussion: 2018 Nov
Related membership discussions: 2018 Nov, 2017 Sep

Launched - Welcome mat for organisations The Welcome Mat is a guide to organisations and corporations that want to be involved with OpenStreetMap. It has information to familiarise themselves with the project, the community and especially to learn our expectations and their responsibilities.

• Check it out
• Suggestions, issues and pull requests

Goals

• Have organisations better prepared on their own to engage in OSM.
• Clearly communicate what they can expect from OSM, what they should be thinking about, and their responsibilities in getting involved in OSM.
• Direct them to talk to Board, within OSMF and OSM when appropriate.
• Provide contact points to get questions answered.

Timeline

• 2017-05 Proposal during the board Face-to-Face meeting.
• 2017-08 Concept note sent to the Advisory Board members. Key feedback received was to avoid making a separate site, to expand the about page, to modify the osm.org navigation header and to choose a name that will not be problematic for people who do not have English as a native language.
• 2018-01 Draft in progress.
• 2018-05 The OSMF Board has consulted the Advisory Board members on the content of the Welcome Mat
• 2018-07 Some of the Advisory Board members briefly discussed the Welcome Mat during State of the Map 2018.
• 2018-07 Membership consultation.
• 2018-11 Launch.

Approved - Organised editing guidelines (former directed editing policy) There is an increased interest on OSM from corporations who have employees that edit in their daytime. This might create communication problems between paid and volunteer mappers, or even an imbalance of power. Out of this situation the question arises on how to regulate this to ensure fair play. The DWG has developed a set of organised editing guidelines, after integrating a lot of feedback from the advisory board members, the humanitarian mapping initiatives and the mapping community. These have been approved by the Board on 2018-11-15.

Timeline:

• 2017-04 The board had asked the DWG to work on a corporate editing policy, in a manner that it has sufficient community input, and before anything is decided to come back to the board.
• 2017-09 The views of the community members were collected through a DWG survey.
• 2017-11 The DWG issued a draft Directed Editing policy.
• 2017-11 There was discussion on the osmf-talk mailing list.
• 2017-12 Advisory Board members proposed an alternative version.
• 2017-04 to 2018-09 Ongoing work by the DWG.
• 2018-09 The DWG sent to the board a document with organised editing guidelines, after integrating a lot of feedback to reflect consensus and existing good practice.
• 2018-10 Guillaume Rischard (from the Data Working Group) attended the October Board meeting and answered questions.
• 2018-11 The Board had a closed portion of meeting regarding potential conflict of interest of Board members and voting on the guidelines and the proceeded to approve the organised editing guidelines.

Previous board discussions: 2018 Oct, Sep (about COI), Jan, 2017 Jul, Jun, Apr

Approved - Terms of Use The Terms of Use, proposed by theLicensing Working Group (LWG) have been approved on 2018-09-20 by the Board.

These terms cover the use of services officially operated and provided by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). In particular these are

• the openstreetmap.org website and associated services and APIs,
• the OpenStreetMap data distribution,
• the OpenStreetMap wiki and help websites,
• the OpenStreetMap mailing lists and forums

By using these Services, people agree to be bound by the following Terms of Service, as updated from time to time (collectively, the "Terms"). If someone does not agree to these Terms, they may not use the Services.

Revised - OSMF Trademark policy The OpenStreetMap Foundation has updated its Trademark Policy, as per January 1st 2018. The revised policy is the work of the OSMF volunteer Licensing Working Group.

• Announcement
• Read the updated Trademark Policy

Approved - Non-Disclosure Agreement The NDA, proposed by theLicensing Working Group (LWG) for working group members, has been approved on 2018-09-20 by the Board as the recommended NDA to use in all aspects in the OSMF, if an NDA has to be used.

Approved - OpenRailwayMap licence application Alexander Matheisen's (OpenRailwayMap) licence application under our domain grandfathering scheme was approved by the Board on 2018-06-21.

You can read more about why one needs to licence the OSMF marks hereand read the FAQs for more information. The template application is here.

Approved - Belgium Local Chapter OpenStreetMap Belgium has become the newest Local Chapter of the OpenStreetMap Foundation! Introducing them, in their own words.

If you or your organisation are interested in the becoming a Local Chapter please see the FAQ, the documents needed for application and the template agreement. You can contact the Secretary, at secretary@osmfoundation.org and there is also the Local Chapters mailing list, which is dedicated to the discussion of topics and issues of interest to the Local Chapters of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, as well as those groups interested in becoming a Local Chapter.

Started - OSMF regular reporting OSMF updates - Highlighting updates related to the Foundation - mostly news from the volunteer Working Groups, the Board of Directors, the Advisory Board members and some project news. Frequency: ~ every 3 months.

Started - Providing deleted users list We now publish a daily export of deleted OSM user IDs (mostly spammers).

Revised - Board Rules of Order The Board Rules of Order have been updated. Voting was done in two parts (1, 2).

Additions/modifications are in blue

Section: 2. Board Duties

1. The board collectively decides on guidelines that govern their work. Board members will respect these guidelines when executing their offices or other board duties. When in doubt, a board decision is called for.
2. Board members are expected to:
   1. actively support and further the interests of the OSMF
   2. participate in board meetings and decisions
   3. perform any duties conferred to them by the Articles of Association or the General Assembly
   4. give account of their work to the General Assembly and the members of the Association.
3. Board members may be asked to convey board decisions to third parties. In doing so, they have a duty to represent the board's decisions factually.
4. Board members may serve in OSMF working groups, but should refrain from chairing them

Section: 6. Board Meetings

1. Board meetings can take place in the form of personal meetings or by voice communication.
2. Board meeting participation is restricted to board members, but guests can be invited by a board decision. Board meetings are open to silent observation by OSMF members in good standing.
3. Agenda items can be placed in a closed session, prior to the meeting by any Board member. Closed session is not open to observation. A short statement about which and why agenda items are in closed session should be minuted. If there is any objection to placing a meeting in closed session, a vote can be called during that meeting to decide.
4. Board meetings are chaired by the chairperson of the board. During discussions of any items in which the chairperson is involved, the task of chairing that section of the meeting will be delegated by the chairperson to another board member.
5. The quorum is met if at least 50% of board members are present. Board resolutions are carried by a simple majority of the board members present.
6. All board decisions taken in a board meeting must be minuted. If votes are taken, the minutes will list the position taken by each board member. In addition, it is desirable to also minute the most important points of the discussion preceding a decision.
7. When a board member would be influenced by a conflict of interest with respect to a decision, they will recuse themselves from voting.

Section: 7. Circular Resolutions

1. Circular resolutions are board resolutions on time-sensitive issues agreed prior to a board meeting.
2. Any board member has the right to request a circular resolution at any time, by the means which electronic circulars are implemented (currently Loomio) together with a reasoning to the board mailing list. The reasoning should describe why the proposed resolution is in the best interests of OSMF.
3. Circulars in general are open for one week, or can be extended to two weeks by request of any board member. Votes are tallied until the conclusion of the circular.
4. The proposed resolution concludes under either of these conditions
   1. Passes as soon as an absolute majority of board members approve
   2. Passes if at the end of the circular period, an absolute majority of board members participate, and a majority of those approve
   3. Fails as soon as an absolute majority of board members disapprove
5. Any circular not passing may be raised as an agenda item at a board meeting for discussion and vote.
6. Circular resolutions will be duly minuted in the minutes of the next board meeting.

Completed - State of the Map 2018 conference State of the Map 2018 conference in Milan, Italy.

Most presentations and some lightning talks were recorded. Breakout sessions also took place outside of the pre-arranged program (not recorded).

• Program (also a printed guidebook (PDF))
• Videos on YouTube.
• Write-ups in several languages.
• Photos on Wikimedia Commons
• Public list of 408 attendees (as at 2018-07-26)
• For the first time, the State of the Map conference had an academic track. Its main purpose was to bring together and foster interactions between the OpenStreetMap community at large (contributors, developers, users, etc.) and the academic/scientific community of researchers from all over the world.

Completed - Google Summer of Code 2018

Student projects that have been accepted to take part in the year 2018 Google Summer of Code:

• OSM Public Transport Editor-2nd Part (completed)
• Continued development of Public Transport Assistant (completed)
• Extend wikipedia plugin for JOSM, especially with regard to wikidata (completed)
• iD Editor : Support for vector tile data (completed)
• Adding Notes to iD Editor (completed)
• Golang implementation of OpenStreetMap API
• GTFS Converter

More information (Names of students and mentors, proposals, documentation).

Ongoing or discussed in 2018 - board mainly

Microgrants Providing microgrants was a topic discussed extensively during the Face-to-Face board meeting in April, where a plan was developed. You might know similar programs from e.g. OSM-US, HOT or FOSSGIS. As a start and as a first trial we want to make a time-bound program where you can apply for microgrants until a specific date. A consultation document was shared with the membership and the Advisory Board members, which contains an outline and top questions. There were also two microgrant-related sessions at the State of the Map 2018 conference (read some discussion points and questions).

Related board discussions: 2018 Aug, Jul, Jun, Apr, 2017 Aug, Jul, May.
Related board working sessions: 2018 Sep, Jul.
Related SotM 2018 session: there was a lightning talk, for community feedback

FOSS policy The OSMF Free and Open Source Software Policy requires us to re-evaluate the use of hosted or closed-source software every two years with a view to changing to a FOSS solution if practical. The policy was devised to guide, but not mandate, software choices for work within the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board, Working Groups, and other OSMF bodies. Here are some examples of software choices made by the Board:

• Mumble is a FOSS voice conversation tool. We use a server hosted by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.
• Loomio is a FOSS for making decisions. We use the service hosted by Loomio themselves.
• Github is both hosted and closed, so we could improve partway by moving to hosted and open. Github poses particular problems in that there is no easy way to export the functionality we're using, nor are we making backups of it, and the records have long-term value.
• Google Apps is a proprietary hosted service, which we use mainly for email.

Related discussions: 2018 Jun, 2017 Apr (Email hosting), Sep

Risk response plan Discussion about developing a toolkit/plan to help the working groups and the board to handle situations where things could go wrong (vandalism/technical/financial/other).

Start developing guidance for our involvement in politics/activism Start developing guidance for our involvement in politics/activism: We have already taken a stand regarding the EU's proposed revision of its copyright directive, by signing as the OSMF the https://savecodeshare.eu petition. The board also had a more general discussion about our involvement in politics/activism.

OSMF-owned engine for social surveys An OSMF-owned engine for social surveys has been proposed in the recent past (1, 2). This topic was raised again as the SotM Working Group wanted to run a community survey about the SotM 2018 program.

Some survey tool suggestions:

• Umfrageplattform - tool developed by OSMer Harald Hartmann for surveys among OSM contributors. Users have to authenticate with OSM OAuth. (Source)
• Emapic (not self hosting solution) - FLOSS survey engine focused on geolocation that uses OSM as base map. Alpha version. (Source)
• LimeSurvey has been used by the SotM-WG and the DWG

Related board discussion: 2018 Mar

Conflict of interest Extensive discussion during the Face to Face meeting. Also discussed internally in the board mailing list and touched-upon on some board meetings.

Related board discussions: 2018 Sep (CoI and organised editing guidelines), Nov (CoI and organised editing guidelines)

Other news

Server news

First map tile caching server in Africa
We now have our first map tile cache server in Africa, thanks to INX-ZA!
New tile rendering server in the USA
Thank you to OpenStreetMap US, Ian Dees and Oregon State University Open Source Lab for our first map rendering server outside Europe!
New tile caching server in Chile
Altavoz provided a caching server in Chile, making tile.openstreetmap.org faster for mappers in South America. Thank you!

Large bitcoin donations

On January 2018 we received a large donation of 18 Bitcoins - then worth over €200,000 - from the Pineapple Fund! We also received over 2.3 BTCs - worth €30,000 (£27,000) - from another anonymous donor. Read more here. All Bitcoins (except 3) have been since cashed-out.

Top Ten tasks updated The list of the Top Ten Tasks, that the Engineering Working Group would really like your development help on, has been updated.

RSS button added to blog.openstreetmap.org Subscribe with your favourite RSS reader.

New mailing list: OSM Science Subscribe or view archive. Focus:

• talk about recent scientific research on OSM
• develop the OSM research agenda
• get feedback and support on your planned OSM surveys (BEFORE they are undertaken)
• get feedback on your scientific plans and preliminary results from an interested subset of OSM community members
• look to develop collaborations, meetings etc (such as SotM 2018),

Official social account on Mastodon We now have an official account on a Mastodon server focused on all things OSM (in English - there is also fr.osm.social for francophone OSMers). Read the blogpost and follow us!

New OSMF registered address The OSM Foundation has a new address:

OpenStreetMap Foundation
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge
CB4 0WS

Thanks to our long-time board member, Andy Robinson, whose address we have used since the OSMF was founded!

Future

• Community Volunteer Drive

Ongoing - Working Groups

Operations Working Group, Join

• Ensuring the operation and smooth running of the XML editing API and data distribution services.

Report: Operation Working Group (November)

Data Working Group, Join

• resolving issues in copyright violation, disputes, vandalism, and bots, beyond the normal means of the community;
• helping to set policy on data;
• detecting and stopping vandalism and imports that do not comply with guidelines.

Activity reports: Q1, Q2, Q3, Crimea

Licensing Working Group, Join

• GDPR/Privacy policy
• DMCA policy
• Short step by step guide of how to approach licencing considerations and add things to look out in the licences.

-

• Licensing matters relating to using our geodata, (our end user license, community guidelines, License FAQ).
• Licensing matters relating creating our geodata, (contributor terms, [imports], using aerial imagery ...)
• Legal matters relating to responsibility and risk, (trademarks, safe harbour, privacy, child protection, ...)

Minutes: Licensing Working Group

Membership Working Group, Join

• Member self service area
• Administering the membership database
• Answering routine membership queries
• Increasing OSMF Membership

Minutes: Membership Working Group

State of the Map Working Group, Join

• State of the Map Policy
• Responsible for the organization and execution of the annual OpenStreetMap Foundation Conference "The State of the Map".

Minutes: State of the Map Working Group

Engineering Working Group, Join

• Coordinating "Google Summer of Code" projects.

Minutes: Engineering Working Group

Communication Working Group, Join

• Communicating the work of the Foundation and related news, through official channels.

Minutes: Communication Working Group

How can I help?

Become a Member
Help a Working Group
Become a Local Chapter
Become a Corporate Member
Donate

• Normal members provide their full residential address and can vote on all issues. They can also be candidates in the election to Board.
• Associate members provide just their country of residence and can vote - but not on all issues. More information here.