Regarding a Conflict of Interest Policy, my point was not to use non-profits in the US as a model. Just that it is common to have a Conflict of Interest Policy. A policy can be developed to specifically serve the OSMF’s needs as long as it covers UK Companies Law. It not being enough doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be one.

If your views “are not always in line with the majority of the OSM community and that my ability to anticipate what is actually in these interests is limited, especially with topics that are ‘relatively far from home’.” Then are you sure radical reforms are needed to serve the needs of the OSM Community? In my experience, there is a disconnect in the needs of individual mappers from country to country. I could see someday having a more parliamentary model with representatives from local chapters and then some “at-large” members, though we would need many more groups to sign on as local chapters to make it work.

imagico: I don’t think Mikel was lobbying for corporate interests, the guidelines wording could have been more clear. I voted in favor of them because I figured it was best to have an initial release than try to come up with a perfect policy. For example in the guidelines “should” is used heavily but “must” would make more sense at least in US culture. If the goal of the Organised Editing Guidelines was mostly aimed at American organizations then changing the language to clarify it so it is best understood by those organizations makes sense to me.

I’m curious why if you have serious doubts about the current board’s ability to self-regulate you have never put yourself forward to the board? Did you not recently say “Wer im Glashaus sitzt sollte nicht mit Steinen werfen?” Komm, sitz mit uns.

I do think the board should have a conflict of interest policy. There are the requirements from the UK Companies Act, but in my experience having a policy additionally sets a schedule for reviewing potential conflicts and recording them. For non-profits in the US it is required as part of the application to get tax exempt status.

A board member sent an edited policy to the board based on the one that was approved. No discussion occurred about the content of the draft.

@imagico I don’t think board members anonymously leaking information is a great way to have an effective board. It would be a great way to return to some of the problems that @Richard is alluding to though.

I fail to see how the board not sharing something that wasn’t considered somehow discredits the board. Typically when you send an email to someone do you expect them to feel free to share it publicly without permission? Call it a strawman, but I call it email etiquette. Should board members make it a point to never speak to anyone at a SotM because they might be somehow influenced as well?

Regarding the alternative policy mentioned in the meeting, it was sent to the board but I don’t think it is fair to say it was considered. Meaning I don’t think the board read it and considered voting on it, I myself did not. Had we read it and discussed voting on it I would agree that it should be shared publicly since we did not I think it is a different situation and up to the person that wrote it.

@Zverik there are many other studies showing that it isn’t that women don’t want to code, it is that they feel pushed out or don’t think it is for them in the first place. Harvey Mudd College now has more women than men graduating in computer science by changing how it was taught.

Just by using different language you can attract women to apply to jobs they might not have before.

Anecdotally I know many women who have felt pushed out of OSM. If we really want as detailed a map as possible we should figure out how to stop doing that.

For those that doubt that there are issues with gender diversity in OSM and claim they haven’t heard anyone say it is a problem. Heather and I are BOTH women in OSM and are saying it is an issue. We have both experienced issues. This doesn’t mean all women experience issues, but WE are saying we have. Other women have approached me in the past citing issues, hence one of the reasons for hosting this workshop.

For some of you, I suspect no amount of proof is ever going to be enough. Fine, you can go and map. You don’t need to argue with us about our own initiative though, you probably aren’t the audience for it anyway.

philippec: maybe if the men didn’t flock around and treat women like a unicorn that wouldn’t happen…

Richard, We (the board) are planning to get the osmf-announce back to being used. That way nobody is forced subscribed to OSMF-talk.

The first discussion will take place Monday at 17:00 London time. This will take place on the HOT Mumble server.

I just wanted to make a minor correction. I currently am not being paid for doing any work related to OpenStreetMap. I am currently looking for work, but generally, have been applying and talking to organizations in open source/data though not related to OpenStreetMap.

All the mapping I’ve done in the past year (which I admit is not very much) has been of the hobby mapper variety.

In my experience, much of the data isn’t available in the first place. For example much work has been done to collect RW and RT boundaries in a few cities.

You will find a bit more information on OpenStreetMap.id: https://openstreetmap.id/blog/

One of the reasons for the waiver program is that adjusting the fee to GDP or some other index doesn’t help with the issue of having cheap methods of transferring money. In many places that is still more than the cost of membership.

Ouch, I knew if I named people I was thanking someone will be omitted! I’m very much looking forward to continuing to serve with Paul and Frederik!

I agree with @woodpeck that the key with the waived membership fee is getting the word out and having a plan.

There are two things I’d like to see regarding licensing in OSM.

1. A clear method showing how a license change might work. The last one was a long a painful process for both the cohesiveness of the community and the people actually doing the change.
2. I don’t think anyone actually knows what the average OSM contributor thinks/feels about licensing. Maybe they don’t care at all as long as it is “open”. A community survey could perhaps benefit, though maybe only those of us that are passionate for licenses would answer.

In my work with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team there are times where the license is an issue. For example many UN agencies have non-commercial clauses in their data, so simply removing the share alike wouldn’t help. With government there are some groups that do not have issues with the ODbL and certainly others that do, usually depending on how they are contributing or benefiting from OSM.

Basically I’m saying there needs to be more research and a possible path shown. At the moment a license change feels impossible so getting many people on board even with the idea would prove difficult.

Just wanted to mention I posted this to the diversity-talk mailing list. I would like to convene a meeting with interested parties to discuss.

@ebwolf: One thing we’ve done is link things the other way. To the OSM ids. Which isn’t perfect either since people can delete the feature and re-add it or split it or any other number of things that could change the OSM id. Though it has worked fine for what we have been doing so far.

@mikel: I wonder maybe the issue is that the OSM code base has completely been aimed at one base. I think there have been forks of it but the modifications have been for specific projects rather than with the goal of creating a geodata platform that could be deployed for a number of uses.

I think also the social aspects you are suggesting would make the rails application more useful for other types of communities. Meaning I would think the goal of using the codebase for another project would be to build a community around data. Currently that would be really hard, since all the other community tools that osm uses would also have to be set-up.