Board/Minutes/2020-05-06

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Draft notes of board mid-month video chat (non public)

Location: Video room https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/ror-nt7-6tu
using BigBlueButton.

Date and time: Wednesday, 6th of May 2020 at 17:00 London time
Acronyms

Participants

Board members

  • Allan Mustard (chairing)
  • Paul Norman
  • Rory McCann
  • Guillaume Rischard
  • Joost Schouppe
  • Tobias Knerr
  • Mikel Maron (joined approximately 7' after start)

Biographies.

Guests

No guests. (non public video chat)

Not Present

Administrative

Action items from this meeting

The list is sortable, collapsible.
Items in blue are either new or have updates.

Name Date Action item and status Source Related to
Tobias 2020-05-06 to send hiring policy related email for membership consultation Meeting S2S 2020 "Hiring"
Tobias 2020-05-06 to create first draft on hiring policy that the board will comment on Meeting S2S 2020 "Hiring"
Guillaume 2020-05-06 to send out proposal for sysadmin one week after the email on hiring framework goes out for membership consultation, highlighting that it is something the sysadmins have asked for Meeting S2S 2020 "Hiring"
Guillaume 2020-05-06 to send out a circular to approve 2019 end of year accounts. Meeting Finances
Allan 2020-05-06 to inform the membership about these mid-month meetings Meeting
Joost and Rory 2020-05-06 to come up at next board meeting with recommendation for microgrants committee regarding how open their meetings should be. Meeting Microgrants
Paul and Guillaume 2020-05-06 to schedule a board session to go through the community's objections on the LWG proposed attribution guidelines and come up with new language Meeting Attribution
Mikel 2020-05-06 to set-up call of board members with Facebook people Meeting Attribution

Hiring policy [Tobias]

Related to:
  • Community consultation.
  • Fancy job titles.
  • Proposal for sysadmin. [Guillaume]

Points during discussion

  • Finance in the future might be done by someone paid.
  • Not talking about having employees right now.
  • Making statement with intention for future board is part of the reason to adopt hiring guideline.
  • Risk of gradually widening the scope of hiring.

Suggestions

  • Wait one week for members comment on hiring thread and then send the sysadmins proposal.
  • Mention that we're not thinking of hiring someone in executive or mapping function.

Action items

  • Tobias to send an email on hiring framework for membership consultation.
  • Tobias to create first draft on hiring policy.

Fancy job titles
Suggestions

  • Banned job titles - might alleviate community concerns.
  • Add notes in hiring guidance about how we approach job titles and how we engage someone for services.

Points during discussion

  • Currently talking about sysadmins and part-time dev. Not talking about executive or serious management functions. Not pay for mapping.
  • Guillaume in sysadmin call description used "contractor".
  • Allan not worried about job titles but functions.

Allow guests to this meeting or not [Rory]

  • Not relevant at this point. (The topic was added before the meeting took place)
  • Need to communicate to the membership about these meetings. [Joost]

Action item: Allan to inform the membership about these mid-month meetings.

Microgrants update (of note: preference for committee meetings without guests) [Joost]

  • 49 proposals on OSM wiki.
  • Deadline for community endorsement and comment of proposals: 21 May 2020 (midnight Pacific time US, 9am Central European Time, 7pm New Zealand time).
  • Policy Framework mentions: "The Board expects the Committee to be open by default".
  • Most Microgrants committee members prefer meetings in private.
  • Committee wants to revisit the topic when they will start analysing specific projects. However, as these discussions will be about people, maybe not best place to have open meetings either.

Allan: publish the decisions, but debates can justifiably be held in closed meetings.
Rory: agree that personal details must be kept private. Middle ground possible.

Suggestion [Joost]: Application to join as an observer.

Question [Joost]: Does anyone find unacceptable for them to not have open meetings?
# No-one objected.

Action item: Joost and Rory to come up at next board meeting with recommendation for Microgrants committee regarding how open their meetings should be.

Approval of 2019 year end accounts [Guillaume]

Action item: Guillaume to send out a circular to approve accounts.

Status of Attribution policy [Guillaume][requested by Allan]

  • Draft unacceptable to majority of commenters.
  • Some points legally acceptable but not socially acceptable.

Guillaume got reply from Marc (Facebook) and missed a reply from Tom (Mapbox).

Action item: Paul and Guillaume to schedule a board session to go through the community's objections and come up with new language.

OSM-US Local Chapter application [Guillaume]

Background: Initial interest has been expressed before 2017 in a Local Chapter application from the US, as OpenStreetMap US has been operating for nearly 10 years and would like to see the organisation become an official Local Chapter. Communications restarted after the new OSM US was elected in 2019. The OSMF board discussed during the 2019 F2F meeting the questions received and there were in-person meetings of members of both boards during the State of the Map 2019 conference. As a first step forward, the board proposed that OSM US draft an addendum to the local chapter agreement.

The received proposed draft addendum is here. The board has talked about inserting clarification regarding trademark to addendum.

Related board discussions:

  • Draft of revised LC agreement (after discussions with OSM-US) was seen by LWG.
  • Draft of revised LC agreement to be sent to Francis Davey (our pro-bono corporate counsel) and then to the community.
  • New LC agreement template will be used for future LCs and the update will be suggested to existing LCs.
  • Guillaume had chat with Simon Poole, who had some suggestions. E.g. 1) limit for appeal, 2) no damages should be granted for termination.
  • Allan has talked with Maggie Cawley (OSM-US board) about virtual signing ceremony in July (during State of the Map).
  • Before signing the agreement, we need 1) approval of the new LC agreement and 2) OSM-US community and membership consultation on OSM-US as a LC applicant.

Argentina Local Chapter application [Joost]

Background: Asociación Civil Geolibres has applied to become the OSMF Local Chapter for Argentina. All necessary documents and translations have been received. The local and membership consultation period will end on the 18th of May, 2020.

Local consultation: OSM-talk-ar
Membership consultation: osmf-talk

  • Community and membership consultation started.
  • They are thinking about following the Belgian two-tiered model. Geolibres is just umbrella organisation for legal aspects but does not take decisions. OSM community does not have legal persona but create a very open constitution.

Options

  • Wait for them to send proposal, which will be circulated to the membership.
  • Explain what they are and include in agreement that they will provide an annual openness report.

Question [Rory]:
Whether pre-approval is common in Argentina.

Brief Open Source Initiative updates (survey, affiliate calls) [Tobias]

OSMF is an OSI affiliate member.
  • OSI doing survey, affiliate calls.
  • Board has confidence in Tobias dealing with them.

Status of Facebook attribution issue on mobile [Mikel] [requested by Tobias]

  • Offered to ask Mike.
  • Not complicated engineering wise but organisation wise.

Suggestion: value of direct group call with some of them.

Action item: Mikel to set-up call of board members with FB people.

Membership Working Group progress (fee waiver, membership prerequisites) [Joost][requested by Tobias]

  • Feedback collected on hackpad, started writing document, text turned to FAQ, currently voting by email.
  • No fundamental changes, mostly clarification.
  • Final draft to be run by the board and maybe by community again.

Oceania chapter application [Rory]

Background: OSGeo Oceania Limited has applied to become the OSMF Local Chapter for Oceania. All necessary documents and translations have been received.
  • Direct messages to active mappers (~16 so far).
  • No feedback yet.

Question about new "fee waiver"/active contribution program [Tobias]

Is new active contribution program active?
No.

Duration: 46'.

Next meeting

Public board meeting on 21st of May 2020, 17:00 London time.

Acronyms