Rewind two years, September 2012. I’m rather fuzzy on why I stood for the OSMF board in the first place, but I remember at least being annoyed by the treatment of the working groups by the board, experiencing first hand a dress down of one our most respected community members just because he didn’t jump when the then chairperson said jump. And yes something didn’t feel quite right about the organisation.

To make a long story short, I wasn’t expecting to end up being elected the chairperson and further was expecting the fault lines inside the board to be in other places than they turned out to be. Naive me assumed that we would be having heated discussions about the scope of services the OSMF provides and how we delineate what the OSMF does from commercial and other services providers, how to grow the OSMF membership base and how we could best support the wider OSM community. Alas things were not quite ready for that.

My approach was let the past be the past, fix the issues and then move on. The net result was an uphill battle every foot of the way over the last two years and for the moving on part, well that might have happened now.

Why did I step down?

No, I didn’t step down because of some flak on the mailing lists. I’m a big boy (well I am kind of small actually) and can easily take the heat. A consequence of exposing yourself and engaging with the community is that you tend to function as a focal point for everything real or just perceived wrong about the organisation you are representing, it simply comes with the territory. But I still think it is necessary out of respect to the OSMF members to be open about what I think and where I believe the sticky issues are, instead of spewing safe political correct canned sound bites or hiding away somewhere.

Steve Coast has decided to stage a come back after two years as chairman emeritus, as board member and chairperson that put me between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand I have to respect our democratic processes and not interfere with the ongoing election, on the other hand I do hold strong opinions on where we should be heading and in what fashion.

To make things clear: I consider it a very silly thing for Steve to do, bad for him, for the OSMF and for the whole project.

As the board member that has driven most of the change over the last two years, I see the danger of old alliances undoing the baby steps towards a more mature organisation we have achieved. An organisation that could actually engage in all the things the current board candidates envision. An organisation that holds a stable course and can function as a trustworthy intermediary between our fantastic community and the rest of the world.

I stepped down to make clear this is not about power, or my personal position, but about what is best for OSM.

Somebody who has been to a recent talk of mine on OSM might remember a slide representing OSMspace, showing some of our fairly complicated interactions and overlaps with the outside world, the OSMF a tiny speck somewhere off centre. Yes the OSMF is just a tiny piece of the puzzle with limited influence on the project as a whole. Most of our contributors will likely never know that it exists, no different than the Wikimedia Foundation. What is different is that OSM is a significant player in a multi-billion dollar market and the outside forces are of a very different nature.

While the OSMF is just that tiny speck in the OSM ocean it does hold the keys to our core product and with control over the foundation it is completely possible to misuse that. Yes, even handed, community control of the OSMF is important for everybody in OSMspace, and it scares me when somebody seriously proposes handing those keys to a Junta, even if it is “only for a year”.

I would like to end for now with thanking everybody that was kind enough to show me support over the last few days it is much appreciated.

More to come …..