Board/Minutes/2023-09-14
Draft minutes.
Location: Video room at https://osmvideo.cloud68.co
using BigBlueButton.
Date and time: Thursday 12 October, 15:00 UTC - Countdown
Please note that this board video chat is not open to observers.
Participants
Board members
- Craig Allan
- Guillaume Rischard (Chairing)
- Mateusz Konieczny
- Mikel Maron
- Roland Olbricht
Not Present
- Sarah Hoffmann
- Arnalie Vicario
Officers and board
Biographies
Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.
Guests
Not open to observers.
Reportage
Fundraising
- Fundraising is going well.
- We're switching payment providers a few times.
- Communication happening a lot.
- Donations look impressive. EUR 50,000 in one month, reducing.
Financial updates
- The accounts for the financial year 2022 have been signed and submitted.
- Roland Olbricht cannot attend the regular appointments of the funding committee on Mondays.
- Guillaume Rischard has disabled notifications for individual donations on Stripe.
Vector Tiles
Sarah Hoffmann and Guillaume Rischard had a meeting.
(More on the topic further down).
On cases of board confusion
Roland Olbricht apologised for creating confusion regarding accepting automated account creation as a feature, as he misread some communications.
On the specific case: Issue has been cleared.
Points mentioned during discussion
- Impression that the previous board was more confused.
- To solve board misunderstandings it is important to talk to other board members and not take it outside.
- All recent misunderstandings were solvable.
On recent approval vote of the financial statements for Financial Year 2022
Reference: Circular 2023/Res27 Financial statements for Financial Year 2022
- Mateusz Konieczny recently voted against approving the accounts due to the wording of the document (on how many directors and employees we have), which is not clear.
- The source of the wording is the template we have to use by Charter Allan (Accounting firm).
- It might be a lot of work to get a simple template change.
- Might be added as a note to the yearly financial report.
On OSMF moving to the EU
| Background |
|---|
| OSMF relocation or subsidiary |
We might have to keep a small OSMF in the UK for some assets.
Emails to OSMF dropped by Gmail
| Background |
|---|
Related to the discussion about moving e-mail hosting away from Google. Previously (see 2017 minutes) the proposal was to move email to OSMF/OWG for reasons such as privacy, avoiding "lock-in" and practical issues, as in cases where e-mails from external persons get rejected by Google.
|
- Recently someone emailed trademarks@ but they did not receive a reply nor did the email reach us. The sender contacted Mateusz via LinkedIn.
- We thought there was one quarantine email queue, but there's one queue for each email group as well.
- Grant will work on the issue after he works on moving the planet to S3.
Complaints about name:en vandalism
Mateusz replied to some of the people that complained to the board that we are working on the issue.
Suggestions
- Mateusz to email again, notifying that the issue has been fixed.
- Publish a blog post mentioning appreciation to people who fixed the issue, including DWG, sysadmins, Tom Hughes.
- Develop communication strategy for cases of crisis.
- Courtney Williamson (CWG) suggested that Kate Varfolomeyeva (CWG), Guillaume and her spend a weekend in Vermont to talk about communication.
- Invest in the structural infrastructure of OSM and have a way of filtering what the API accepts.
Email by Paul Norman on interpretation of etiquette guidelines
| Background |
|---|
| The board received an email request by Paul Norman to clarify if all use of profanity is unacceptable behavior on channels that follow the Etiquette Guidelines or if language such as "wtf", when not directed to a person, would be acceptable. The email was prompted by a discussion between the moderators on community.osm.org concerning statement that "use of profane or obscene language violates the Etiquette Guidelines" and that this acronym always qualifies as such. |
| Suggested by Mateusz Konieczny. |
Question by Mateusz on whether the linked discussion on community.osm.org is accessible by other board members.
> To be resolved asynchronously.
MapBuilder - Microsoft requesting ability to automate user account creation
Suggested by Mateusz Konieczny.
With the current OSM accounts created by Microsoft, MapBuilder users cannot log anywhere else in the OSM ecosystem, that's why Microsoft is working on single sign-on (SSO).
Guillaume had some brief talks with the working groups.
Licensing Working Group (LWG): seems to think it's okay as long as they are linking to the terms of service and let people know that they're accepting a third party's terms of service.
Data Working Group (DWG)
- Ambivalent about users not being able to reply to changeset comments via email.
- Raised in 2022.
- Can't reply via email, but there is an option to reply within the MapBuilder application and they get notified.
- Sign-ups should be in small batches, not in batches of a thousand of accounts.
- Limits might be put into place for the recent vandalism case in Russia, which might affect Microsoft.
- Wait on the other Working Groups to give ok - however the DWG does not vote on issues, rather volunteers take-up a cause.
Suggestions
- Accounts are ok for X months, and then SSO needs to be in place.
- Instead: Review progress by a certain date and we may do revisions.
- Could be revised in exceptional circumstances.
- Talk with Andy.
- Have a dummy test account on dev API.
- Might be a lot to set up.
- Reply to Microsoft and remind them that they were supposed to enable some things and ask them whether they consider them done.
Other points mentioned during discussion
- Progress on the SSO has been slow.
- Feeling not shared. Additionally, there are variables, so it's hard for them to estimate.
- If we resolve the issue about changeset comments, it will address everything that the DWG brought up in early 2022.
- There were concerns mentioned to the board about the underlying value of edits.
- You can't log in to other services with the MapBuilder accounts at this point, that's why they're working on the SSO.
Next step: Guillaume will have a call with the DWG and ask whether another call with the MapBuilder team could be useful.
Polling Working Groups on what kind of volunteers they need and sharing this information with the community
Suggested by Mateusz Konieczny.
Suggestions
- Email the Working Groups asking whether they want volunteers and if yes, what kind of requirements they have.
- Time staggered email.
- Mateusz to attend a CWG meeting, usually on Mondays.
Other points mentioned during discussion
- Coordinate with the CWG to publish the results.
- Unclear to some board members what kind of contributions Working Groups would welcome from interested people.
- Most working groups are always desperate for volunteers.
- Some working groups (e.g. CWG) have that information already published.
Next steps for Vector Tiles proposal
| Background |
|---|
| The board decided on 2023-06-29 to earmark a budget of EUR 2,000 for a Vector Tile rendering stack proposal by Paul Norman. Paul is volunteering on the Operations Working Group.
Previous board discussions/decisions:
|
| Topic suggested by Roland Olbricht. |
- Sarah Hoffmann wrote a good report on the meeting she had with Paul Norman.
- Paul Norman will send a revised estimate soon.
The Engineering Working Group (EWG):
- Wants Vector Tiles done.
- Financials: The EWG has considered paying it out of its budget, but it would be over EWG's own budget if we end up with a slightly higher amount of time than Paul has estimated.
Suggestions regarding finances
- Consider whether to raise the EWG budget and have a reserve for Microgrants.
- Have a fundraising targeted appeal, saying that if we fundraise X, we will have Vector Tiles in production.
- Do a circular on the funds to Paul, when Guillaume and Sarah indicate that it's close to payment.
- We could make the circular conditional on fundraising.
Other suggestions
- Splitting the project into three: serve Vector Tiles in production before we start working on a schema and a style.
- Have a meeting with EWG, Paul, Sarah, Guillaume and perhaps the fundraising team.
Other points mentioned during discussion
- EWG involvement is positive, to do the project management and have frequent communication with Paul.
- Not a lot of volunteer time for day-to-day management.
- The fundraising team is excited about it.
- Good that EWG is considering management.
Next steps
- Guillaume Rischard to discuss with Sarah Hoffmann the online document that Paul Norman shared.
- The online document to be discussed afterwards with the fundraising team.
- Have a meeting with EWG, Paul, Sarah and Guillaume.
Making the "Etiquette/Process_for_Moderation" OSM wiki page less confusing
| Background |
|---|
| The Etiquette/Process_for_Moderation page on the OSM wiki does not mention community.osm.org, which we now use instead of forums.osm.org.
Suggestion to move the current introduction to the "History" subsection and add "This rules are now applicable also to official OSM forum, known also as community forum" with https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Moderation_team_for_talk_and_osmf-talk_mailing_lists#The_%22general%22,_%22general:tagging%22,_and_%22foundation%22_channels_on_community.openstreetmap.org as a reference. |
| Suggested by Mateusz Konieczny. |
That's something the moderators are working on.
Effective handling of cases where the attribution requirement is violated by someone using the OSMF tile servers
| Background by Mateusz |
|---|
| For context: there were some sites which were using OSMF tile servers and there was spontaneous decision on meeting to instruct Operations to terminate their access to tile servers. Later it turned out that standard method is to go through LWG, not via OSMF board. [..] Seems that LWG is aware of that, there is plan to go through https://github.com/openstreetmap/tile-attribution/ for at least obvious and blatant cases ( https://www.oelschneider.de/saarbruecken-rodenhof.html would fit, not sure about https://radar-opadow.pl/ with its attribution buried in settings) [..].
more on enforcing OSM attribution requirements) |
| Suggested by Mateusz Konieczny. |
- Mateusz will handle the tickets on the new GitHub issue tracker https://github.com/openstreetmap/tile-attribution/ for reporting clear cases of missing attribution while using the OSMF tile servers.
- Guillaume is preparing a checklist for reporting such cases - Mateusz to help.
- LWG has published the attribution "love letter" email template that community members can use for emailing parties which are using OSMF tile servers but are not attributing OSM.
Suggestion: Block the first 10 entries by hand and not automate the process yet.
State of the Map EU 2023 update
| Background |
|---|
| OSM Belgium is organising the State of the Map EU 2023 conference. They had initially arranged financial support in order to cover the deposit with the SotM EU conference venue, due by July 31. However, that support is no longer possible so they contacted the OSMF board for a loan of 15K EUR for the venue deposit. OSM Belgium is currently also transitioning its institutional home from Open Knowledge Belgium to OSGeo Belgium, which adds to their challenges. Such loans are not intended as a regular service, and an agreement is being drafted to handle this loan.
Open Knowledge Belgium is an OSMF Local Chapter (LC). The Local Chapter application and supporting documents are here. Related
|
| Suggested by Mateusz Konieczny. |
Roland disconnected 39 minutes after start, due to low battery.
Guillaume had a chat with Ben Abelshausen (OSM BE, which organises SotM EU 2023) in August.
OSM Belgium:
- Shared a revised budget about State of the Map (SotM) EU 2023.
- Will be able to cover the cost, even in half the tickets are sold.
Other points mentioned during discussion
- A few scheduled board activities at SotM EU.
- Courtney Williamson and Kate Varfolomeyeva ask whether the OSMF would cover the plane tickets to attend SotM EU for fundraising.
- Guillaume will also ask the board for covering the plane ticket (~ EUR 600).
Board members' presence
- Sarah Hoffmann and Guillaume Rischard will attend.
- Mateusz Konieczny is considering attending.
OSMF booth at State of the Map EU 2023
Suggested by Sarah Hoffmann
Related to suggestion by Dorothea to have an OSMF booth with promotional material, like at the international State of the Map conferences.
- We should have people at the booth.
- Donations and memberships from previous SotMs were tracked.
Next step: Dorothea asked to provide a quote to the board regarding total expenses, including merchandise.
Interview request
Suggestion: Ask them to post on community.osm.org
Next step: Dorothea to reply to them.
Benevity enquiry
| Background |
|---|
| The board received an enquiry from a community member who asked whether to donate to osm.us on Benevity (their company uses benevity.org to match donations) or whether they should register OSMF on Benevity.
The potential registration of OSMF with Benevity to receive donations was discussed by the board in the past (e.g. 2019 minutes). The understanding at the time was that we would need to attain 501(c)(3) equivalency in the US. Mikel looked into the issue and emailed Benevity, but had not heard back. Some OSM organisations that are on Benevity include OpenStreetMap US, Wikimedia Italy, OpenStreetMap Bangladesh Foundation, OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan, Indonesia OpenStreetMap Association and others. |
| Suggested by Mateusz Konieczny. |
Benevity requires OSMF to be a 501 C3 in the US.
Next step: Mikel to reply.
Any other business
Test Google meet
- We pay for Google and they provide transcripts for meetings on their platform.
- Cloud68 (which currently provides the OSMF BigBlueButton video-server) does not seem to monitor their services.
Next step: Guillaume to try Google meet on a one-on-one conversation.
Chat ended 52' after start.
Next meeting
Public board meeting on Thursday 28 September 2023, 15:00 UTC
Open to OSMF members.
- Date and time: Thursday 28 September 2023, 15:00 UTC - Countdown
- Video-room: https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/dor-2cd-qah-rim
- Page for preliminary agenda and minutes. Topics will get locked one week before the meeting, on 21 September 2023.
See the Monthly Board meetings page to find out where board meetings are announced and for a subscription link to have future board meetings automatically added to your calendar. The dates of public board meetings are also added to https://osmcal.org/