This is part 1b of my analysis of the candidates of 2017 OSMF board elections. Part 1a can be found here.

Please read the notes and explanations at the beginning of part 1a before reading this part!

David Dean

David Dean is Australian citizen, only understands English and is classified by HDYC as Heavy Mapper (very active). He started mapping in 2007 because he found all geocaches which were reachable during lunch break. He has been an active mapper since then although he has only very few active days between 2011 and 2016. He wants to increase the representation of the communities in AU/NZ/South Pacific Region. He works as a scientist on machine learning. His OSM edits are focused on Australia but he also contributes to HOT tasks. David wants to bring OSM to the indigenous communities around the world (he himself has no indigenous roots). They have a different look at the world than people from Europe or North America. In addition, he states that OSM data should take ownership of their OSM data.

He wants to bring the “present and future impact of automation, machine-learning and/or artificial intelligence [on mapping in OSM]” to the board, a topic has been working on for more than ten years. Although it might sound so, he thinks that machine learning is no antithesis to his opinion that local communities should hold ownership on their data. Instead, machine learning applications should support mappers and should be accessible to mappers and not be used in an import-like way.

David has not been active in the OSMF. He organized local OSM community events (see his user diary) in Brisbane between 2008 and 2011. He became inactive in 2011 because he thought that OSM was “finish” in his local area. He continued with mapping in 2016 by tracing buildings and using StreetComplete.

There is no formal OpenStreetMap association in Australia, so the question about his activity there is unnecessary.

David has some open source contributions which have related with OSM. He mentions two pull requests to StreetComplete and a machine learning project for OSM by Development Seed (Mapbox is a spin-off of Development Seed). His Github user name is dbdean.

He has not earned any money with OSM yet. There might be a commercial relation between him and OSM in future because he currently applies for a research grant “related with machine learning and HOT/OSM”.

According to several people I talked to, David is unknown in the international English speaking OSM community. He has not participated in any conference yet and there has not been any conference in Australia.

Trademark policy

He thinks that the draft published by the LWG is reasonable. He comments that we should be careful not to put in anything which is perceived as a burden by the organizers of local OSM events.

Term limits

He has not formed a final opinion yet. In principle, he is in favour of such a rule but he remarks that there should be enough candidates and we should not exclude committed board members from re-election just to limit their time on the board.

Transparency

David supports the currently practised transparent (i.e. public) board meetings. He has not listened to any board meeting yet.

Time to invest in the work at the board

He tries to dedicate one day per week for OSM-related activities.

Strategy of OSMF

He thinks that the do-ocracy culture in OSM and the independence of all those third-party applications around OSM is great. He would like to have some kind of process to integrate some useful applications into osm.org.

There are no plans by David to change the current strategy of OSMF. But the OSMF is perceived as a separate entity by many community members and this should be changed.

Imports and mechanical edits

David is critical towards imports and mechanical edits and thinks that all imports should be reviewed by local mappers.

Organised and paid editing

It seems that he did not understand this question on the Q&A page or answers evasively. The policy should treat mappers who map for money or a certificate and those who map without any reward.

Share alike

The share alike clause might discourage some potential data users to use OSM data. But another license change is not the effort worth. The active local OSM communities do compensate the disadvantage of the share alike.

OSMF supporting local chapters

He wishes that OSMF supports and encourages local communities to found their own local OSM association.

OSMF paying staff

He refers to the responses by Heather and Joost

Experience in fundraising

David has some experience with fundraising in the academic world and for start-ups but not for non-profit organisations. Membership fees of persons and companies and donation drives should be the main source of income in future.

Heather Leson

Heather is a Canadian citizen currently living in Switzerland and has an OSM account since June 2011. HDYC classifies her as a casual mapper (rarely active). She has only contributed to OSM on 11 days during these six and a half years. Her changesets are small in size. The first three changesets belong to a mapping party in Toronto in summer 2011 when she was “recruited” by Richard Weait. All other changesets are humanitarian mapping. Heather was member of the HOT US Inc. board of directors from sprint 2013 to spring 2017. She was secretary in her first year on the board, then president until spring 2016.

Heather works for International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva which is involved in the Missing Maps project.

Her manifesto is emphasizes “community building” and governance of open source community as her strengths. She has worked for Open Knowledge, Ushahidi and Mozilla. At HOT, she lead the group which drafted the new code of conduct.

After joining the board she wants to start a discussion how the leadership of the OSM project and the working groups of OSMF can become more diverse (regional diversity). She wants to open OSM for people with “diverse skills” who do not want to support OSM as a mapper or developer and wants to build a network of “community managers”. Her answer on the Q&A page is more precise. These community managers should be paid and she wants to hire multiple community managers.

She wants to transform the OSMF board of directors from a board of people how actually do stuff to a “strategic” board which decides and let other – probably paid – people do the work. She proudly described this change which already happened to HOT US Inc. in her blog in April.

Asked whether she has a commercial relationship with OSM, she responds that she wants to be part of OSM governance due to the “data policy”. It can be assumed that she means the Directed Editing Policy.

Heather participated in three regional OpenStreetMap conferences, the SotM 2016 in Brussels and the HOT Summit in Brussels (just before SotM 2016).

Heather would like to introduce a strong code of conduct with an enforcement.

Two emails by Nicolas Chavent, co-founder of HOT, reveal the dark side of a code of conduct. He writes that Heather filed a code of conduct complaint against him in autumn 2015 (first email). He and Severin Menard, another francophone user who has been HOT US Inc. member for a very long time, had drawn (email by Nicolas, email by Severin) attention on OSMF-Talk mailing list on possibly too high influence of HOT US Inc. on the OSMF and that HOT US Inc. voting members could gain a majority on the OSMF board of directors. He tells that he was informed by the board of HOT US Inc. that a code of conduct complaint had beenfiled against him. In May 2017 another code of conduct complaint was filed against him (second email. A board member had to resign due to a conflict of interest and Mikel Maron wanted to promote the first candidate who did not get a seat in the previous board elections. Nicolas started a discussion on HOT US Inc. voting member mailing list about conflicts of interest in general because the conflict of interest was foreseeable and dealt appropriately by the board. Mikel responded to the mailing list and warned members to participate in this discussion.

Severin casted doubt on Heather’s qualification and fundraising experience in an email on 22. November on OSMF-Talk mailing list. Severin served as a board member of HOT US Inc. from spring 2014 to February 2016. He writes that she emphasized her fundraising skills on the board but did not collect any money. Due to “confidentiality” she did not even report about her activity to the other board members. It came to the light when HOT US Inc. ran out of money. Several people, mainly from the (dominating) anglophone wing of HOT US Inc. criticized Severin for being unrespectful and offending. (He wrote that seeking for a seat on OSMF board were shameless with that low OSM activity referring to her small number of changesets)

The claims by Severin and Nicolas have not been denied substantially.

Trademark policy

Her response is meaningless. She has no suggestions for any changes.

Board term limits

She responds evading and asks counter questions which are partially beside the point.

Transparency

She does not want to commit herself to any opinion.

Workload

Heather responds that she dedicate five to ten hours per week to HOT US Inc. She thinks that the board should be a strategic board and the work should be done by the working groups.

Strategy of OSMF

She answers the questions regarding the role of OSMF in community software projects with two short sentences and refers to Joost’s response. She would like to know the opinion of the Operations Working Group before committing herself to any opinion.

Her response to the question for her opinion regarding the strategy of OSMF is confusing. She just responds with a bunch of counter questions.

Import and mechanical edits

She has no opinion and thinks that the working groups should deal with this questions.

Organised and paid editing

Her response is ambiguous. She writes that organized or even commercial edits are less valuable. The draft process of the Directed Editing Policy is the main reason why she runs for the board. She points to several articles about the contribution of companies to open source projects but forgets that OSM is no open source project but an open data project.

Note: Heather has a conflict of interest here. On the one hand she wants to influence the process leading to a guideline on directed editing, on the other hand she works for a organisation which does directed editing.

Share alike

Her response is much shorter than the responses of the other candidates. She thanks for their responses, thanks the Licensing Working Group and thinks that ODbL should be better explained.

Fundraising

Mailing lists users should not criticize ideas to make OSM(F) more attractive for funders. Here response is quite long but it misses the main point of the question – the experience in this field.

Desirable sources of income

She writes that she is unable to answer this question and has to learn how it currently works. OSMF needs people outside the board who do fundraising. It is not clear whether these people should be paid but one can assume that they are paid. She thinks that there are already skilled people in the wider network of OSM(F) who would like to help if there were no “drama” and “skilled people to collaborate”.

Part 2

Part 2 will interpret and analyse the candidates and their opinions in a non-neutral way and will provide a ballot recommendation.