OSM Foundation Management Team meeting
18th February 2014, 20:00 - 20:30 GMT
AGENDA & MINUTES
- Draft -
Participants
Present: Dermot McNally, Michael Collinson, Henk Hoff, Matt Amos
Unavailable:
Apologies:
Agenda and Minutes
Minutes of previous meetings
Jan 21
Proposed: Dermot
Seconded: Henk
Accepted
Nov 19
Proposed: Dermot
Seconded: Michael
Accepted
Open Action Items
20130423-01 Harry Interviews need turning into blog(s). Invitation has been send out to Paul.
[Pending]
20130723-03 Mike (and Paul) to do expand on DMCA document and blocking text (mostly [done, need to add text on publishing requests before asking board to formally endorse]
20131217-07 Henk ping Nick Black re OSMF use of telconf and up-to-date dial-in list (Montreal no longer working) (Done but no response yet)
20140121-08 Gerhard Look at what OSGeo does re corporate sponsors/members
20140121-09 Dermot will “interview” GeoFabrik as to why they became a member.
Highlights Current Status Working Groups
CWG:
DWG:
EWG:
- Much discussion of routing, and there is a prototype implementation.
LCWG:
LWG:
- Nothing to report. No meetings.
OWG:
- Many hardware upgrades. UCL “decant” meetings still ongoing. Preparing to increase Nominatim resources, and potentially routing hardware too.
SotM:
- HOT is willing to run a scholarship program again.
SWG:
Why should a company want to join OSMF?
Dermot reported Geofabrik insight:
Frederik Ramm generously shared in useful detail the thinking that led Geofabrik to become OSMF’s first corporate member. The consistent theme throughout the points made is “ask not what OSM can do for you, but what you can do for OSM”. Some key points from Frederik’s contribution:
- A company deriving benefit from OSM should take as the default position not that it will join given a sufficiently good reason but that it will join in the absence of a sufficiently good reason not to.
- Notwithstanding that OSM may explicitly be used for commercial purposes, a company doing so and giving nothing back could be considered something of a parasite.
- Although a certain number of companies, including Geofabrik, do contribute directly to the project even in the absence of a corporate membership, having corporate membership is still the one key act associating a company recognisably with the project and doing so also acts as a good example to other companies seeking to position themselves similarly.
- Any company that gains or saves enough through OSMF can reasonably be expected/cajoled/shamed into contributing £1k for such a good cause. Noble example - if a prominent company comes looking to know how to get a tile server going, it should be deemed reasonable to “encourage” them to pay for membership.
- Membership should not be seen as “here’s how I can get x benefit” but as “here’s how I can give something back”.
- All this said, we should avoid negative messaging. We should not condemn the non-members, but exhort them to support the project that supports them.
- It is also a valid part of the message that this kind of support is an investment in the sustainability of the project, something we expect to be of importance to the companies we are addressing here.
We discussed and added a few caveats to Mike’s release draft. Mike will add the above section and forward to the board as an ideas document.
This is the final document:
https://docs.google.com/a/osmfoundation.org/document/d/16mLObd1eBIOlgLlgcM77Tzfpds2bzDHiNSXU56Ch1gI/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16mLObd1eBIOlgLlgcM77Tzfpds2bzDHiNSXU56Ch1gI/pub (publicly viewable version)
AOB
There will be meeting re potential Strategic Working Group in early March to see if momentum can be got going.
Next meeting
March 18 march 18 2014, 20:00 GMT/UK, 21:00 CET (Note North America switches to summer time 9th March, Europe remains on winter time until 30th March)
Meeting End
Meeting ended at 20:30 GMT