Board/Minutes/2018-04-19

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Location: Mumble, Thursday 2018-04-19 at 21:00 London time

Participants

Board members

  • Kate Chapman (Chairperson)
  • Peter Barth
  • Martijn van Exel
  • Mikel Maron
  • Paul Norman
  • Frederik Ramm

Guests

  • 8 guests

Open to all OSMF members.

Guests are welcome to speak at the end of the meeting on the topics that have been discussed. Please note that text messages sent on Mumble chat may not be seen by people who join using mobile apps.

Not Present

  • Heather Leson

Administrative

Previous minutes

Circular Resolutions

2018/Res7 Sign https://savecodeshare.eu

2018/Res7 Sign https://savecodeshare.eu
The EU is in the process of revising its copyright directive. As essentially always when such things are discussed the lobbies of the rights owners tend to have a lot of influence. This has led to a fairly draconian proposal that if passed as is, could potential require us to pre-filter user contributions made to OSM for copyright violations. Voting for signing as the OSMF the https://savecodeshare.eu petition, even if the subject matter is slightly different than what we are directly involved in.
Unanimously accepted 2018-04-10

Previous action items

The list is sortable and collapsible.

Name Date Action item and status
All 2018-03-15 to send a reminder about etiquette guidelines on osmf-talk, talk & facebook page
All 2018-02-15 to clean-up the SotM draft policy document
All 2017-11-16 to send an email to members, months in advance of the 2018 Annual General Meeting, encouraging them to discuss and perhaps propose their own resolutions.
Frederik/Mikel 2018-03-15 to look at providing CiviCRM discount codes for State of the Map 2018. Will also look at how many people have already signed up and offer partial refund or suggest donation.
# 2018-04-20 Update: CiviDiscount has been fixed by Tom.
Frederik/Paul 2016-05-28 to prepare transparency document from transparency session
Heather/Mikel 2018-02-15 to contact local communities and regional State of the Map organisers about the SotM policy and then provide feedback to the SotM-WG and the board.
# Done
Heather 2018-01-25 to talk to Paul and get more details about the board representative on the trademark license subcommittee and then contact the Licensing Working Group, if required.
# Done
Kate 2018-02-15 to follow up with Grant about the technical workaround of having conference announcement banners on osm.org linked to landing pages on the website
Kate 2018-01-18 to initiate discussion about 2018 priorities over email.
Kate 2018-01-18 to update the etiquette and add a reporting plan
Kate 2018-01-18 to email F. Davey about Conflict of Interest advice and cc Paul
Kate 2017-08-24 to write to the Advisory Board list about microgrants
Kate 2017-08-24 to contact Michael about closing inactive mailing lists that she is an admin of
# Action item will be removed as personal.
Kate/Martijn 2016-05-28 to draft diversity policy
# No progress to report. Low priority.
Martijn 2018-01-25 to initiate the local community and membership consultations regarding the OSM Belgium Local Chapter application.
# Done
Martijn 2017-11-16 to create the draft of the microgrants policy, separating it from the attempted combined draft with the updated travel policy
Martijn 2017-10-26 to raise the question to the Advisory Board about whether they would like to have an archive of the AB mailing list
# Martijn will prepare a brief orientation document for the AB and will ask then.
Martijn 2017-07-18 to look at the process of regular reporting by the Local Chapters to the board and vice versa.
Mikel/Paul 2018-03-15 to look at the ten most active mailing lists and see if people listed as admins are active in the moderator role, what is in place, and how they manage the lists.
Mikel 2018-01-25 Mikel to work on potential updates on the circulars' procedure to vote on.
Mikel 2018-01-18 to make sure the osmf-announce read-only mailing list is restarted - with help from Martijn, Paul & the MWG.
# Done (link)
Mikel 2017-08-24 to send email on the list to find businesses that would like to offer input on the Welcome Mat
Mikel 2016-08-19 to send round bullet points on diversity policy proposal
Paul 2017-02-21 to separate the State of the Map (SotM) net profit discussion items and start the follow-up discussions
Paul 2016-10-28 to create a page on the wiki, listing software products which are used by OSMF and are closed-source and/or are externally hosted
# Was Peter's
Peter 2017-04-18 to make a list of requirements for email self-hosting and discuss them with the Operations Working Group
Topics: FOSS policy | EU copyright | Corp. Donation | CiviCRM | AB | GDPR | Guests: Minutes | FOSS policy | EU copyright | Closed: Corp. Donation

Requests to:

  • Make minutes more concise, as they might give the impression that something has been thoroughly discussed while it might have been mentioned by one person.
  • Previous Action Items list: Remove the second listing of action items that were assigned to two persons.

Some topics were reordered, compared to the original agenda, and a closed session was added during the meeting.

FOSS Policy

Our FOSS policy is devised to guide, but not mandate, software choices for work within the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board, Working Groups (WGs), and other OSMF bodies.

  • We have to review any non open-source software and services we are using every two years.
  • There was no software inventory (FOSS/non-FOSS) up to now.

We've had the policy for almost two years now, and are failing to make progress with it. At the two year mark in July we need to re-evaluate any "grandfathered" hosted or closed software.

Discussion about how we can further the policy in reducing our usage of hosted or closed software.

--
Tangential: solutions mentioned during previous discussions: framasoft, pretix (as a replacement of the CiviDiscount module), Umfrageplattform (as a self-hosted replacement of limesurvey).

Related discussions:
2018 Mar (OSMF-owned engine for social surveys)
2017 Sep, Apr (email hosting)

Lead: Paul

Issue: We have not been considering Open Source alternatives to software/services we are using.

  • Our FOSS policy does not spell out what to do if it is not followed.
  • Paul has catalogued the software and services that the Board and the Working Groups use. Examples: Gsuite, Loomio (open source but hosted), Slack, Github.

Suggestion: Publish the catalogue on the OSM wiki.

Action item: Paul to document the evaluation process.

Topics: FOSS policy | EU copyright | Corp. Donation | CiviCRM | AB | GDPR | Guests: Minutes | FOSS policy | EU copyright | Closed: Corp. Donation

EU Copyright directive letter

The EU is in the process of revising its copyright directive. The proposal, if passed as is, could potential require us to pre-filter user contributions made to OSM for copyright violations. In addition to signing the https://savecodeshare.eu/ petition (suggestion by the Licensing Working Group), there was also a suggestion for a joint letter of the OSMF board and Local Chapters (LCs). The LCs that are in EU countries can then translate the message, add a description of the LC and send it to their EU representatives.
Lead: Mikel

Suggestion by Wikimedia representative:
Sending letters to MEP representatives in the right constituencies could have an impact on the upcoming EU Parliamentary committee vote at the end of the month.

  • Template letter created by Mikel and Kathleen (LWG).

Next steps:

  • Get feedback about the template letter from the Wikimedia representative we've been in contact with.
  • Ask Local Chapters to get involved.
  • Send letter to persons that the Wikimedia representative recommends.

Suggestion: Leverage Corporate Members as they will probably be negatively impacted too, if OSM is negatively impacted.

Topics: FOSS policy | EU copyright | Corp. Donation | CiviCRM | AB | GDPR | Guests: Minutes | FOSS policy | EU copyright | Closed: Corp. Donation

Corporate donation with un-disclosed amount

An existing Corporate Member is interested to publicly pledge a fixed percentage of the profits they make with an OSM-based product/service to the OSMF. These donations will be in addition to their Corporate Membership. They would allow the OSMF to inspect their financial records, but they do not want (at least not yet) to publicly disclose the exact amounts of the donations.

  • Frederik stated that he preferred not to participate due to potential conflict of interest.
  • Request from a board member to move the discussion to a closed session of the meeting, as it might not be easy to discuss this issue generically.
  • A general description of the situation was provided to the members.

The discussion continued during the closed part of the meeting.

Topics: FOSS policy | EU copyright | Corp. Donation | CiviCRM | AB | GDPR | Guests: Minutes | FOSS policy | EU copyright | Closed: Corp. Donation

CiviCRM contract to fix bugs

CiviCRM is an open source, internationalised suite of computer software which we use to manage our membership database, send emails to our members, as well as to manage registration to the State of the Map conference. There were recent problems which were solved by an upgrade by Tom Hughes. Current problems:
  • CiviDiscount enabled but not accessible
  • Mailings:
    • immediate/scheduled/some membership reminders aren't sent to members, while they appear as complete
    • draft mailings are sent
    • temporary workaround found for very infrequent mailings
Lead: Mikel

Membership Working Group (MWG) input:

  • Renewal mailings not reaching members. Steve Friedl is looking into this.
  • The MWG would like to narrow the problem down before calling expert help.
  • Suggestion that if an expert is called, to be called for all problems that the WGs and the board face.

Action items

  • Frederik to do short writeup regarding the recent CiviCRM issues, which will be sent to experts who might be able to help.
  • Mikel to handle emailing and getting quotes.

Suggestion: to also seek expert on the osmf-talk mailing list.

Topics: FOSS policy | EU copyright | Corp. Donation | CiviCRM | AB | GDPR | Guests: Minutes | FOSS policy | EU copyright | Closed: Corp. Donation

Advisory Board - monthly update

The Advisory Board (AB) is an entity separate from the OSMF board of directors, composed of individuals - either nominated by corporate members of the OSMF or invited directly by the OSMF board of directors. The OSMF Board of Directors will publicly minute, in the board meeting minutes, any communication sent to, or received from, the AB. This monthly section is reserved for this purpose.

AB related Board discussions:
2018 Mar, Feb, Jan
2017 Oct, May (F2F), Apr, Mar, Feb, Jan

Lead: Martijn

Recent updates:

The State of the Map Working Group contacted the AB members about:

  • The call for venues for State of the Map (SotM) 2019.
  • Supporting the first SotM event in Oceania, which will be a joint FOSS4G & SotM event. It is backed by a non profit spatial industry body (Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute) and will be held in Melbourne, Australia, 21-24 November 2018.
Topics: FOSS policy | EU copyright | Corp. Donation | CiviCRM | AB | GDPR | Guests: Minutes | FOSS policy | EU copyright | Closed: Corp. Donation

GDPR preparation update from the LWG

The General Data Protection Regulation will come into effect May 25, 2018. The Licensing Working Group (LWG) has asked for feedback on a document with a set of recommendations. Please note that the paper outlines our approach and some of the details still need to be determined. In particular the future relationship with community and third party data consumers that utilize OSM meta-data and what will actually be dropped/made less accessible of the data listed in Appendix B. Feedback can be provided on the osmf-talk mailing list or on the talk page.

Related LWG discussions: Apr 2018, Mar 2018, Feb 2018, Nov 2017, Sep 2017, July 2017
Related Board discussions: Mar 2018, Feb 2018

  • LWG document with recommendations was recently published - people did not have a chance to comment yet.
  • Need to figure out what the board's action items are.
  • We are not a conventional case and we can show we are making progress and a good faith effort at implementing things to follow it.
Topics: FOSS policy | EU copyright | Corp. Donation | CiviCRM | AB | GDPR | Guests: Minutes | FOSS policy | EU copyright | Closed: Corp. Donation

Any other business

None.

Guest comments or questions

Minutes length comment

Comment by Imagico that it might be tricky to ask Dorothea to decide what to include in the minutes (Related to the request at the beginning of the meeting for the minutes to be more concise).

FOSS policy suggestion

Suggestion by Imagico to encourage all WGs to have their minutes on the OSMF wiki, as some have them as Gdocs.

Additional reasons, besides the FOSS policy:

  • Will make minutes more searchable.
  • Helps document retention (e.g. if an owner of documents hosted by Google leaves the organisation or if something happens with Gdocs in the future).

EU Copyright directive letter questions

Questions by Douglo:

> Is there a minimum number of people to sign the letter?
The letter will be sent on behalf of the Foundation, not of individuals. Regarding Local Chapters, their size does not matter for signing it.

> Which Local Chapters will sign the letter? Only the EU ones?
Yes.
Individuals can sign the savecodeshare.eu petition.

Topics: FOSS policy | EU copyright | Corp. Donation | CiviCRM | AB | GDPR | Guests: Minutes | FOSS policy | EU copyright | Closed: Corp. Donation

Closed portion of meeting

Corporate donation with un-disclosed amount

An existing Corporate Member is interested to publicly pledge a fixed percentage of the profits they make with an OSM-based product/service to the OSMF. These donations will be in addition to their Corporate Membership. They would allow the OSMF to inspect their financial records, but they do not want (at least not yet) to publicly disclose the exact amounts of the donations.

Related osmf-talk discussion.

Topics: FOSS policy | EU copyright | Corp. Donation | CiviCRM | AB | GDPR | Guests: Minutes | FOSS policy | EU copyright | Closed: Corp. Donation

Next meeting

The next board meeting will be on the 28 & 29 April 2018 at Karlsruhe.

The next online monthly board meeting will be on the 17th of May, at 21:00 London time, unless rescheduled.

Meetings take place on the 3rd Thursday of the month, at 21:00 London time, unless rescheduled.

Meeting end