OpenStreetMap
OSMF 2020 proposed AoA and mission statement changes
Posted by SimonPoole on 1 December 2020 in English.I pointed out some of my concerns with the change to the OSMF articles of association and changes to who is to become eligible to a member on the the OSMF mailing list a couple of weeks back, see https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2020-October/007231.html
Those comments were just on the general concepts that were being proposed not the actual text, which we have now received as part of the formal general meeting announcement.
Unluckily my concerns not only persist, they have increased with respect to the proposed change to the OSMFs articles that will allow the board to create committees that include non-board members.
Currently a large part of OSMFs business is carried out by working groups, in particular the OWG running the infrastructure, the CWG communicating on behalf of the OSMF and the LWG handling licence and other intellectual property matters.
The working groups go back to a OSMF board meeting in November 2008, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OcoOqas1NnOLyhiyFZk12K_BpjhWeXvVU7Nl4MDSGeU/edit?usp=sharing and it is clear that these were established to have topic specific groups in which the board could work on OSMF business with additional participants without having to have the full board present. With other words, working groups have always been board committees with additional members, that this practice wasn’t quite inline with the foundations articles was and has been just a bit of fuzziness among a lot of other issues that the OSMF has had.
Bringing the articles more in line with actual practice is naturally a good thing however it hasn’t been framed that way by the OSMF board, instead the reasoning is that the board needs to have groups that can actually work on behalf of the OSMF, and by extension commit the foundation, for example on human resources related matters. This naturally pulls the proverbial rug out from under the working groups, calling in to doubt every single action and statement they have made over the last dozen years.
Now back in October when I discussed this with Allan, I let the matter lie because there was an obvious quick fix the OSMF could have applied once it had realised what it had done. It could have been made clear that the working groups are such board committees and the AoA change was just an adaption to previous practice. Unluckily since then the actual text of the change includes that a board member needs to be the chair of such a committee, which would upend all the current working group chairs and is incompatible with how that working groups have operated since roughly 2012.
The rule that the chairperson cannot be a board members was created out of the experience of misuse of the WGs and, while it existed, the management board. Essentially by creating a working group and being its representative on the management board, a board member could multiply their weight in decision making by having multiple votes on a matter, when a run of the mill board member would only have one.
My recommendation would be to reject the change as is, and have the board, as this seems to be a high priority item for it, arrange for a vote early 2021 on a correctly framed change with the requirement for a board member to be chair removed.
On to the 2nd controversial item. The board is asking for a mandate to investigate restrictions on who is eligible for OSMF membership. Obviously there is no harm in investigating this, however again I believe this is framed in the wrong fashion. Membership eligibility should follow from the organisations goals, and as a concretization of that its mission statement.
The OSMFs mission statement https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Mission_Statement clearly states
The OSMF membership is open to all who want to support the project and participate in the OSMF’s democratic process.
At the time it was a conscious decision to not limit membership only to active participants, but far more leave this as open as possible. Even though this would likely lead to the OSMF being a “Friends of the opera” organisation and not the “Union of the opera singers”*.
The membership can and probably should breach this subject again, but it shouldn’t be framed as a mere administrative detail inline with providing free membership to active contributors and other similar measures, it is a discussion about the fundamentals of the organisation and should be treated as such.
* had to sneak one of my dreaded analogies in there :-)
Discussion
Comment from imagico on 1 December 2020 at 14:23
Regarding the historic context - i think that was the Management Team, not Management Board.
Regarding the Committee AoA change proposal - i fully agree that this essentially means putting into question or demoting the existing working groups and in general breaking with most of the traditions of the working groups in the OSMF that - as you have pointed out - have in large parts been developed from the painful experience of past failures.
But i don’t think removing the requirement of a board member heading a committee would solve anything here. The thing that distinguishes the committees according to the AoAs from working groups or any other informal bodies in the OSMF is that the board is supposed to be able to delegate its formal powers to to the committees:
As i see it, that is legally only possible if the committee is controlled by the board - which would not be the case if the committees are not headed by the board. So IMO the ability of the board to delegate formal powers to committees would be inherently connected to the board having immediate control over them. Even if the committee would have a ceremonial figurehead that is not a board member.
My reading of the board’s motive for creating committees with also members from outside the board is that the board wants to be able to recruit staff for doing work for them. Staff here not necessarily in the sense of being paid by the OSMF, but in the sense of people working under immediate control and orders of the board or board members. For example, the board members evidently see the upcoming need for quite a significant volume of work in the domain of personnel management (i.e. managing the various people meanwhile being paid by the OSMF for work in some form) and they don’t want to or feel they don’t have the time or abilities to do this all themselves. But if they’d create a working group or a different informal structure for that, they’d run into the problem that such entity could not make any legally binding statements towards personnel (like instructing them what to do, handle requests for leave, dealing with payment matters, approval of deliverables/invoices from independent contractors etc.)
That the concepts of volunteers who are bound by orders from the board is not going to work is a different matter. Practically the whole thing would probably mean either the committees consisting of friends of board members who they trust personally, that members of the committees would be required to sign some kind of oath of loyalty or that members of the committees are people who are already contractually bound to the OSMF (as staff or independent contractors) or to other companies/organizations with a contractual relationship with the OSM (i.e. leased laborers).
Comment from SimonPoole on 1 December 2020 at 15:25
_ But if they’d create a working group or a different informal structure for that, they’d run into the problem that such entity could not make any legally binding statements towards personnel (like instructing them what to do, handle requests for leave, dealing with payment matters, approval of deliverables/invoices from independent contractors etc.)_
What do you think the working groups have been doing the last decade+? Naturally within an agreed remit and budget, and with the purse strings held by the treasurer (in a larger organisation that would typically be delegated to staff too), but de facto this has been done by the WG, who do you think signed off on all the trademark related bills, or who orders and checks hardware? In the real world and not lala land, boards of companies do not actually do all the work themselves.
Comment from imagico on 1 December 2020 at 17:08
To start at the end - companies do not typically have work done by volunteers. And staff of companies has the contractual obligation to follow the order of their boss, and that of the boss of their boss - and ultimately the board.
What has been the common pattern of OSMF work for the past decade+ is that decisions of working groups with any more substantial effect for the OSMF as a whole required confirmation by the board. The whole point of committees as defined by the AoA to me seems to be to avoid that and to delegate actual power (while still controlling its use through organizational hierarchy). Otherwise why would the board propose an AoA change? They are free to create a new type of “board headed working group” any time without changing the AoAs. In fact they have already done so (in the form of the special committees - though not all of them are headed by board members).
Comment from SimonPoole on 2 December 2020 at 17:10
There is nothing stopping the board from creating an additional agreement outside of the NDAs that would define the space in which volunteers can act. But in any case if the board is concerned that it can’t, legally squeaky clean, delegate responsibility to non-board members, then it doesn’t just have an issue with volunteers and the working groups, it is going to have one with employees too. So best completely revamp this in the AoAs instead of doing something that in practical terms is just going to cause issues.
Comment from apm-wa on 2 December 2020 at 17:53
Simon, as I have explained to you, the working groups would not be affected by this proposed amendment to the AoA. Working groups would remain working groups. The Board wants to be able to recruit Foundation members to work on Board committees to deal with the budget, fund-raising, and personnel issues (now that we are raising funds more systematically and also both hiring and contracting out for services and products). The two (working groups vs. Board committees) would not intersect. Period.
As for Christoph’s assertion, “They are free to create a new type of “board headed working group” any time without changing the AoAs. In fact they have already done so (in the form of the special committees - though not all of them are headed by board members),” in fact such a construct has been discouraged in the past, and was the source of a debate when the Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee was created earlier this year. I originally proposed it as a working group but was informed by old-timers that working groups may ONLY be created by the community, not by the Board, and hence it was created not as a working group but as a “special committee” with the proviso that it would not be a permanent fixture. You cannot have it both ways–either the Board must neither form nor chair working groups, or it can. The Board would prefer that the Board NOT be able to form or chair working groups, and that they remain autonomous and largely independent of the Board. My personal attitude on this score is exemplified by my response to a question posed while running for the Board last year on the Board’s relationship with the DWG, and I believe most other Board members, if not all, share that view.
I urge Foundation members to view the proposed AoA amendment for what it is, and not read some sort of dark motive into it. The Board simply needs help formulating the budget, raising funds, and managing personnel. The alternative is to hire professional staff to do it for us, and we have made clear (and had it made clear to us) that such a step would be much less desirable than seeking volunteer help for the all-volunteer Board.
Comment from SimonPoole on 2 December 2020 at 18:15
Just a comment on “ I originally proposed it as a working group but was informed by old-timers that working groups may ONLY be created by the community, not by the Board,” the old timers in question must of have suffered a lapse of memory because if anything the exact opposite was true, see the board minutes I linked to.
Naturally creating a working group without community buy in the sense that there are actually people prepared to work on it is difficult, so obviously creating the working group and having people willing to serve on it tend to go hand in hand which is what might have caused the confusion.
Comment from imagico on 2 December 2020 at 18:49
Allan, i think you just confirmed one of the key points of Simon - that the intention of the board with the proposed AoA change is to create a second branch of the OSMF for everyday tasks (formulating the budget, raising funds, and managing personnel) besides the working groups, which so far - as Simon explained in detail - have been the only part of the OSMF tasked with day-to-day business.
And you also seem to confirm my main point here - that branch is not - like the working groups - meant to be independent of the board but to work under direct instructions and control of the board. That the board has during the past year - and in conflict with the Mission Statement i might add - taken over more and more day-to-day tasks itself might make this seem the natural next step but considering this not to affect the position and practical work of the working groups seems at best naive.
By the way - regarding dark motives - i kind of admire your confidence that none of your six colleagues on the board has motives you are unaware of. I know many of them longer than you have and still i would not claim to understand the motives of any of them well enough to be able to make a statement of moral trust.
Comment from SimonPoole on 2 December 2020 at 19:07
@apm-wa to clarify this again: I’m not accusing the board of dark motives, or anything else than the best intentions. I’m just pointing out that things seem to be confused with respect to how the working groups were operating up to now and the impact of the proposed change.
Comment from apm-wa on 2 December 2020 at 19:18
Christoph, I must heartily disagree that the OSMF Board is in conflict with the Mission Statement or that it is taking on more “day-to-day” tasks. The Board continues to support but not control the project, and raising money for better infrastructure as demand for OSM data grows is fully within the scope of the Mission Statement, as is managing the contracting and hiring and budgeting. How do these mundane tasks affect the CWG, the DWG, the MWG, et al? You say, “…considering this not to affect the position and practical work of the working groups seems at best naive,” but do not articulate how such housekeeping tasks will affect the substantive work of the working groups (except perhaps that having more money has made the OWG’s tasks easier this year). If you have specific concerns, provide them in detail, please. At age 65 and having served in multiple responsible capacities on three continents over my career, I do not consider myself to be terribly naive, but if you see something I don’t, spell it out.
As for creating a “second branch of the OSMF”, no, that is not the case. There is the Board, and there are the Working Groups. The Board takes care of housekeeping tasks, and the Working Groups run the project. The AoA amendment gives the Board a transparent mechanism for volunteer help in carrying out the housekeeping tasks. Period. The alternative is to hire more staff to do that work, and we are averse to doing that if it can be avoided.
You are aware that the Board seeks to revitalize the Engineering Working Group so that it can oversee any software development projects, relieving the Board of any such “day-to-day” tasks. You are aware that the Board has taken control of the iD editor away from a third-party private company, Critigen, and placed it in the community, with the maintainer holding weekly video conferences to receive feedback and incorporate community desires. You are also aware that the Board seeks to create an independent Software Dispute Resolution Panel that will consist of independent community members so that the Board does not have to deal with disputes. In short, the Board if anything this year as sought to avoid “day-to-day” activities, pushing them off on the Working Groups, while focusing on the housekeeping issues: processing local chapter applications (six so far this year), raising funds, approving an MWG proposal for active contributor membership, for example.
Regarding your comment about my confidence in my fellow Board members: I have worked with them very closely since December 23 of last year. We have arguments. We disagree, sometimes vehemently. We stand up to each other over principles and issues we hold dear, and sometimes the arguments are rather, shall we say, colorful. But never–NEVER–in the last 11 months have I seen any indication that any Board member is motivated by anything other than a desire to see OSM continue as a volunteer-driven project into the future. We may disagree at times on the best path forward, on whether there is a role for this or that or a need for this or that, but the direction of the path is clear, and I will stand up for my Board colleagues any day of the week, to you and to anyone else who cares to cast aspersions at their morality or motivations.
Comment from imagico on 2 December 2020 at 20:36
Well - we are drifting a bit off-topic here.
As usual the discussion about interpretation of the Mission statement in its inherent vagueness is moot.
The traditional practice in the OSMF has been that the day-to-day business (or housekeeping, or mundane tasks) is done by the working groups and that the board’s task is mainly to set and maintain the circumstances for this work to function properly. The creation of ad-hoc special committees selected and appointed by the board in non-transparent processes that are tasked with matters that are typical working group tasks is probably the most obvious example of this having changed during the past year. And you now have another case (software dispute resolution panel) where the board even has a concrete offer from an existing working group to take on that task that the board will most certainly - and i venture a guess here, though that is a pretty safe bet - not task to the independent working group but to a board selected panel.
Now don’t get me wrong - i fully understand that with the various big changes you have made during the past year you see the necessity for creating new structures to support these changes. But claiming that the working groups and their position in the OSMF are unaffected by this is unrealistic.
Regarding how the thing would affect the future of the working groups - you obviously cannot look at it merely from the perspective of how would the current plans of the current board affect the current working groups. To get an idea of one part of the problem maybe ask yourself this question: What would happen if a number of community members would, after you have created committees for that, offer to create a working group for budgeting, contractor management or other things, i.e. they would say: We volunteer for doing this work - but only as an independent working group, not as members of a committee headed by a board members where volunteers are merely there to help the board and as alternative […] to hire professional staff. Would you dissolve the committee then in favor of having a working group or would you urge the volunteers to subordinate themselves to the board headed committee because you think that this task is something you want to retain immediate control over and do not want it to be done by an independent working group? If your answer is the latter then you - as i said - create a second branch of the OSMF for everyday tasks and demote the working group to be limited to secondary tasks not considered significant enough to warrant a board headed committee mandated by the AoA.
I have commented in more depth on the near term perspective for the OSMF based on the current direction of the board on my blog - including on the background of the AoA change and how it fits into the general trend of increasing centralization of the OSMF.
Comment from apm-wa on 3 December 2020 at 01:58
Well, Christoph, I don’t deal in hypothetical possibilities. As a Board member I have to deal with reality, the here and now. To date nobody has volunteered to help the Board with budgeting, or raising funds, or managing personnel. We are having trouble reinvigorating the EWG, which in a perfect world would oversee software development.
You write, “The traditional practice in the OSMF has been that the day-to-day business (or housekeeping, or mundane tasks) is done by the working groups and that the board’s task is mainly to set and maintain the circumstances for this work to function properly.” Which Working Group drafts the budget for the Board? Which Working Group raises funds for OSMF? Which Working Group oversees our accountant, administrative assistant, and the iD maintainer?
The current Working Groups will continue as they have, largely autonomously (and more autonomously under this Board than under previous Boards, I am told). You say, “…demote the working group to be limited to secondary tasks not considered significant enough to warrant a board headed committee.” I for one do not consider the work of the DWG, or the OWG, or the MWG, the LWG, CWG, EWG, or LCCWG to be “secondary tasks”. Their remits are the core functions of OSM. Budgeting, raising money, and handling personnel and service contracts–purely administrative tasks–are the functions of the Foundation and thus the Board as part of its remit to “support” OSM. I do not understand how there can be confusion about this.
As for your comment about “ad-hoc special committees selected and appointed by the board in non-transparent processes”, the Board has created a total of three committees, the DISC, the FOSS Policy Committee, and the Microgrants Committee. Why committees? Because we have been told that Working Groups must be grassroots in origin, and cannot be creatures of the Board. We solicited volunteers openly, and selected what we thought were the best candidates for the committees (and in the case of the Microgrants Committee, at least, we had an embarrassment of riches–many good candidates from whom it was hard to choose). That is what boards of directors do in organizations. It is unreasonable to expect that every time OSMF needs something done, we will stop and ask the entire membership to vote on it, or wait indefinitely for a Working Group to self-organize. I suspect–and this is my personal opinion–that if one of these committees were to ask to be morphed into a Working Group, there would be no objection from the Board, and it could go off to be just as autonomous as the other Working Groups (though in fact, the special committees operate just as autonomously as the Working Groups already).
Regarding your statement on the Software Dispute Resolution Panel, I have two comments. First, the Board undertook to create this at the request of the iD maintainers, who had grown tired of the verbal abuse to which they have been subjected, including in one case a statement that one of the maintainers should be shot. In response to that request, the Board has explored how to set up a mechanism for peaceably resolving disputes related to the iD editor, and asked if any Working Group would be willing to take it on. Second, yes, the DWG said it would be willing, but the Board believes a better solution would be to solicit volunteers through not only the DWG but the other Working Groups as well–better because it would be more likely to yield five Panel members from more diverse backgrounds than a single Working Group could provide. That remains a work in progress, and your accusation that the Board somehow seeks centralized control of the iD editor is unfounded. Resolving roughly four to six disputes per year would hardly be the way for anyone to exert control over iD, in case anybody wanted to.
Comment from Jean-Marc Liotier on 3 December 2020 at 08:19
If the Openstreetmap Foundation Board needs a HR associate and a staff accountant, why would they need to be Board committees instead of simply contractors serving a working group ? Of course, direct executive control lets the board do more and do it faster - but at the cost of wider participation, so it amounts in practice to concentration of power and that comes with risks. While executive power ultimately belongs to the Board, I believe that the Working Groups must keep operational control - even when contractors are involved.
Comment from imagico on 3 December 2020 at 12:22
@Allan:
Here might lie a major source of why Simon and me see this matter differently from you. Our critical remarks are based on thinking this through more than one step ahead and that requires dealing in hypothetical possibilities. If our respective hypothetical assessments are correct is open to debate, looking at hypothetical possibilities however is not. Making strategic decisions (and AoA changes definitely qualifies as such) without looking at hypothetical possibilities for the long term results is just reckless IMO.
I observed similar issues in the past - some time ago in the context of the board’s hiring plans several community members were concerned about the lack of a proper risk assessment by the board. And risk assessment is of course exactly that - dealing in hypothetical possibilities. If the board as a principle does not deal in hypothetical possibilities that in my eyes radically and fundamentally limits their ability to make beneficial strategic decisions.
And i am not at all astonished by that - neither are most long term OSM community members. I expressed my concerns about the negative effects of the OSMF selectively starting to spend money on work on volunteer motivation back in July.
One of the main strategic benefits of all day-to-day work in the OSMF being done by volunteer working groups created and managed from the community rather than by the board is that it ensures that what the OSMF does remains grounded in and connected to the consensus in the volunteer mapper community. If you have difficulties recruiting volunteers that should be taken as an indication IMO that your plans are not grounded that much in the community any more. As i have also expressed before it does not help that a huge majority is pretty much excluded or alienated by the dominant and meanwhile also codified work culture in the OSMF.
And again: Yes, i get that this approach seems inefficient to the board seeing current and urgent needs to get thing done. And it is without doubt that with the growing and increasingly diverse community overall consensus based processes (like the grassroots formation of working groups from the OSM community) are struggling. I am probably more painfully aware of that in my OSM-Carto work than most. That is a matter we need to discuss in the OSM community overall. As expressed before my preferred answer to that is increased federalization, more internal diversity and competition and more and more efficient base democracy. But i am open to discussing other options - including elements of more hierarchical centralization. But the discussion needs to happen in the full breadth of the OSM community and not just within the English language and Anglo-American culture filter bubble of the OSMF.
To address your other points in summary - i never doubted that the board has reasons for doing things the way they do. That is not the issue here. The issue are the unintended consequences of the changes you make.
And i never said that the board seeks centralized control of the iD editor - that is a red herring.
Comment from apm-wa on 3 December 2020 at 14:11
@Jean Marc, “If the Openstreetmap Foundation Board needs a HR associate and a staff accountant, why would they need to be Board committees instead of simply contractors serving a working group ? Of course, direct executive control lets the board do more and do it faster - but at the cost of wider participation, so it amounts in practice to concentration of power and that comes with risks. While executive power ultimately belongs to the Board, I believe that the Working Groups must keep operational control - even when contractors are involved.”
The Board like the community is biased in favor of using volunteers where possible as opposed to paid staff. We don’t see a fresh concentration of power–the budget process currently is handled by the Board treasurer with no working group participation, and to my knowledge (correct me if I am wrong) always has been–so nothing new about that. It is simply too much for one person to handle, and with everything the Board has to do, we are asking for some volunteer help from the community. In fact, since the budget and fund-raising are presently handled exclusively by the Board, adding non-Board members to Board committees would make participation wider, not more concentrated.
The Working Groups would retain operational control of the project. I don’t see a conflict here.
Comment from apm-wa on 3 December 2020 at 14:55
@Christoph,
If anything, this amendment will include more community members in the work of the Board, not exclude them. Creating a budget committee, a fund-raising committee, a personnel committee that incorporates volunteers from the community and does not rely wholly on Board members (as is currently the case) is hardly exclusive, it is inclusive.
It is not clear to me what you mean by “codified work culture” in the OSMF.
The Board did in fact debate this, and the potential negative effects on volunteer motivation were a major consideration. The Board went forward with three decisions, however: funding the iD maintainer/developer, effectlvely taking control away from a third party and handing it over to the community (iD development is basically a function of the maintainer’s interactions with the community; the Board provides no guidance on what iD should look like); funding a full-time systems reliability engineer, because the volunteer sysadmins were clearly under strain (that decision was made in full consultation with the sysadmins and the OWG); and funding of limited projects for software used widely in the community (Nominatum, sql2osm, Potlach) based on funding requests from the community volunteers who maintain them. In weighing the pros and cons, and the potential downsides, the Board decided that the risks of inaction were greater than the risks of taking action. You may disagree with our risk assessment, but a risk assessment was made.
There is a cheap shot at the Board here, “English language and Anglo-American culture filter bubble”, directed at the Board which has expanded local chapters from one continent (Europe) to five (South and North America, Africa, and Asia) in the past year, which acquired a DeepL API license so Working Groups can easily use machine translation to share documents across the non-Anglophone world, and which approved the active contributor program, so that a more diverse membership can be recruited for the Foundation. Your criticism on that score is unwarranted. You note correctly “the growing and increasingly diverse community” and to some degree at least that growth and increased diversity has been helped by Board actions over the past year, and will be in the future.
Regarding “increased federalization”, that is an interesting thought, though of course right now the de facto federalized structure comprises the Working Groups operated by community members with minimal Board influence. I’d be curious to hear what else you have in mind, but that is probably a separate discussion.
Comment from imagico on 3 December 2020 at 16:28
We are drifting away more and more from the subject of the diary entry here so this is beginning to be seriously off-topic here.
I mean this - as explained here.
When i say that a huge majority is pretty much excluded or alienated i am talking about the approximately 60 to 90 percent of the OSM community who either don’t speak English on a level that would qualify them for a board appointed committee (so far a hundred percent of all committee members the board has appointed were people with good to excellent English language abilities - in contrast to the working groups which traditionally have been much more inclusive in that regard) or who are seriously alienated by the work culture in the OSMF (which among German mappers is for example the number one turnoff).
No, it is not. It is an assessment i have developed based on a large number of observations and that i have explained in detail on many occasions (some of which i have linked to above). The increasing detachment of the work and communication in the OSMF from the base of the international mapper community is an assessment i can make with high reliability.
This is not primarily the fault of the current board of course - what i’d criticize the board for here is primarily that you fail to critically reflect on the fact that you are much more part of the problem than you are part of the solution.
Anyway - the context in which i mentioned this was the need for a discussion within the OSM community about how the traditionally consensus based and do-ocratic decision making processes can scale in a growing and increasingly diverse global and multicultural/multilingual community. That is a discussion that has to happen in the OSM community as a whole and not just within the much more narrow realms of the OSMF.
The OSMF members mandated that program by resolution in the last AGM, the implementation by the MWG and board was simply implementing that decision. Presenting that as a pro-diversity achievement of the current board is quite a distortion of history (for the record - the idea for a need-independent free membership for active mappers goes back at least to my suggestion of this in September 2017
No, i was referring to increase in diversity in the OSM community, not in the OSMF. And not in the past year but roughly over the past decade. And that is not in any significant way the result of OSMF board activity.
Comment from apm-wa on 3 December 2020 at 18:53
@Christoph,
Ahh, so my outreach to and information collection from non-English speaking local communities over the past year in Asia, Africa and Latin America makes me part of the problem. Got it.
And if the Board had remained paralyzed as it had been the past 10 years (with the exception of the license change)…
Umm, do we not strive for the Foundation to reflect the community, and does it count for nothing that the Foundation’s local chapters are now more diverse (chapters on five continents, not exclusively in Europe) at the end of 2020 than they were a year ago? I guess not.
Comment from imagico on 3 December 2020 at 21:02
Your sarcasm is not very constructive and seems somewhat misplaced - as is the sweeping dismissal of the work of all past board members from the past ten years. You can without much doubt call me the strongest critique of the OSMF board for a large part of these ten years (and i can therefore understand and empathize if this critique occasionally feels like over the top by those whose work i criticize) but i would never characterize their work collectively as paralyzed. Not to mention it is a bit ironic that the chairman of the board that pedaled back on some of the most important progress of boards during the past ten years in terms of transparency is dismissing their collective work as paralysis.
Regarding if the Foundation strives to reflect the community - as mentioned already with the Diversity Statement the current board has at the beginning of the current term quite categorically declared the limits of such endeavors. Overall i see positive efforts in that regard (the free membership for active mappers, the virtual SotM without barrier at least for passive participation, not spending money on the highly problematic scholarship program). But i see also negative trends (like rollback on transparency, move from open argument based discourse to closed negotiations with interests, increasing focus on video meetings and proprietary channels (twitter, reddit), decrease in diversity and increasing cultural homogeneity in the working groups, overall strong centralization tendencies) and many missed opportunities at decentralization and supporting the creation and development of independent and diverse grassroots structures (like local chapters involvement, microgrants).
I understand your focus at the moment is defending your AoA change proposal and that this makes me trying to help you understand the different and critical view of me and others of this change a rather difficult endeavor. But i would invite you - when this is no more an urgent priority after next week - to revisit this conversation and re-read and think about the comments i made and maybe also think about hypothetical possibilities.