OpenStreetMap
My Stance on the Call to Take Action and Confront Systemic Offensive Behavior, Priorities as a Candidate
Posted by Logan Mc on 11 December 2020 in English.Hello All,
First, I wish everyone in the global OSM community and their families good health and safety during this time of the global pandemic. I offer my deepest condolences to all who have experienced loss and hardship this year. My name is Logan McGovern and I am a candidate running for election to the OSMF board. Due to recent events, I feel obliged to share my thoughts and briefly reiterate what I stand for as a candidate.
A statement signed by a coalition of organizations and individuals has been circulated in recent days. It states that the OSM community has failed to confront systemic offensive behavior against women and minority groups. I signed the statement. OpenStreetMap has the potential to become the greatest geographic resource in existence, but only after everyone is proactively brought into the fold. Work remains to be done towards this end. I will give this cause my ear and my voice, pursuing all potential remedies, including a potential restructuring of the board.
Other Priorities:
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Let’s officially commend the numerous and varied achievements that women have made OpenStreetMap!
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Local chapters are key to ensuring a bright future for OpenStreetMap. OSM is sustained by the efforts of volunteer editors. Local chapters reduce volunteer attrition and promote their long-term participation in OpenStreetMap. It is my desire to see many more established, particularly outside Europe. Due consideration should be given to the legal and financial circumstances faced by each individual chapter.
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It is my priority to harden the OSMF against a hostile takeover. I support implementing some form of contribution requirement (mapping, software development, etc.) in order to be eligible to run as a candidate for the board.
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Companies are an integral part of the OpenStreetMap ecosystem. Many of them employ organized editing teams that contribute vast amounts of quality data every year. Others develop extremely useful open-source applications or provide monetary support to the OSMF. There is a vocal minority that uncritically lumps all companies together, maligning them collectively as bad actors. The truth is that OpenStreetMap has benefited immensely from corporate involvement. Companies should be held accountable to the larger OSM community. Most organized editors largely understand that the local communities are indispensable to the continued health of OpenStreetMap. Efforts to bridge the communication gap should be undertaken.
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Provide the reliability systems engineer with the necessary resources to expand and maintain critical physical infrastructure as needed.
Please participate in this election and vote for the candidates that you believe are best suited for service on the board. I am honored If I am among them.
Discussion
Comment from RebeccaF on 11 December 2020 at 15:26
Hi Logan, thanks for taking some time to document your perspectives on these issues
Comment from gileri on 12 December 2020 at 09:39
Hi Logan, can you expand on those two points please ?
They seem contradictory to me. The Call To Action specifically ask to restrict Board seats for one group of the population, and only allow people from groups selected by organizations outside the OSMF to run on those seats. That sounds like a hostile (partial) takeover to me.
But I’m happy to be corrected if I didn’t understand that right. Thank you !
Comment from Logan Mc on 12 December 2020 at 16:45
Hi gileri,
Thank you for commenting. I’m happy to expand on my thoughts. The level of detail in my original post was inadequate. Many of the points lacked crucial context.
More accurately it is my priority to harden the OSMF against Hostile takeover, by corporate actors and business interests. The possibility of an aggressive influx of OSMF members affiliated with one company installing someone who has not contributed in any meaningful form should be curtailed.
Let me be clear: I welcome corporate involvement. I am an employee of such a company. Corporate participation is strategically essential to OpenStreetMap, and the project benefits every day from their contributions that come in many forms. However, I’m exhausted by the grossly false stereotype of corporate actors as hyper avaricious power-hunger schemers who seek to constantly dominate the OpenStreetMap project. Have some made mistakes? Yes! However, by and large, many companies respect the contributions of the volunteer community, enjoy interacting with volunteer editors and cheer on the successes of local communities and chapters. I am eager to be a visible example of an organized editor who puts the welfare of the project ahead of any particular business interest.
Also, generally, the Global South is grossly underrepresented at this juncture. I deeply sympathize with people who seek to change that. So many of them are at the heart of the project, but not at the heart of power. They have been dedicated supporters of the project and we all benefit from their empowerment. In an ideal world, everyone is heard and their needs are addressed. This OpenStreetMap Utopia may never be fully realized, but it is still incumbent upon all of us to work towards a reality that is as close as possible. I do not oppose tying a minority of board seats to geographical areas (which I admit is a thorny issue because any boundaries will have some degree of arbitrariness) or membership in collections of local chapters to ensure that those folks who have already given so much to the project are also at the levers of power. In all honesty, the best solution may be decentralization, granting special privileges to local chapters so they are better able to address the needs of their constituents and stakeholders. I’m unsure what these special privileges would entail, but I am open to all ideas.
I hope this answer is sufficient. I wish you all the best and good health to you and your family.
Comment from gileri on 12 December 2020 at 20:36
Thank you Logan for those explanations and the well wishes. I hope the same for your the people around you.
I agree fully about being watchful of corporate organizations getting additional power in OSM leadership.
Regarding tying seats on the board to nationality :
Board seat candidacy on OSMF are open to anyone as far as I am aware, and voters are at liberty of voting for their candidate of choice without external influence. If that’s not the case, that must (and have been in the past) investigated and acted upon.
Regarding voters, voters would have to have paid a yearly fee, that may restrict the pool of voters to “richer” countries. That was not the case for this election, and surely will stay the same for future elections.
The only problem I see is people with less income may not have as much time available to OSM, restricting their achievements in OSM. I understand that there economic inequality between countries, but the same can be said inside “richer” countries. Education has the same bias, poor people will on average have less access to education. Is is a poverty problem, not a coutry-of-residence problem.
And this problem seems way out of bounds of what a few OSMF Board seats may address.
Another problem is the language barrier : an english-speaking candidate will have an adventage over a non-english-speaking candidate. I’m not sure but I think most OSMF Board communication happens over email, so having using a translation service seems to close that gap.
Therefore the question that remains for me is : if the board election process is close to being totally fair, why is there a disparity between social groups in candidacy ? And in votes ?
What’s stopping heavily invested candidates to even propose their candidacy ? And what’s stopping (or discouraging) voters to vote for those if their contribution is recognized by their peers around the world ?