The Answers and Manifestos of this year’s OSMF board elections have been published a few days ago and a lot of people are probably studying those right now. This is very interesting reading but also a huge volume of text so i have written an analysis of the candidates and their statements some might find helpful.

And since this year’s elections are significant because they could result in both a significant shift to the better and to the worse for the OSMF and the OpenStreetMap project i am also providing an overall voting recommendation based on my analysis. Please keep in mind that this analysis and the recommendation are based on the candidates’ qualification for the position of a board member. Just because i consider someone non-qualified as an OSMF board member does not mean i have an overall bad opinion for them as a person.

I would recommend to vote for (in that order):

• Guillaume
• Allan
• Rory
• Clifford
• Dietmar
• Eugene
• Nuno
• Gregory

I would not include:

• Jinal
• Mikel
• Steve
• Michal

(Edit 2019-12-08: I recommended not to include the last four candidates above but as Alan pointed out there is no harm including them. The likeliness of this making a difference is extremely low of course. What you should do depends on if you have a preference among those candidates you generally find non-suitable or if you want to make a distinct statement by not including them).

Every member should of course decide based on their own personal preferences who to vote for. Even if your values and ideas of what are important qualifications in a board member for the benefit of OpenStreetMap are similar to mine, you might vary the order from my recommendation to reflect your individual preferences. Read my arguments and reasoning and if you have the time also read the full answers and manifestos and form your own qualified opinion to make a good election choice.

Also keep in mind that as part of the elections this year members are also asked to vote on a resolution regarding the membership fee waiver and normal members in addition on various AoA changes. I encourage you to read my comments and recommendations on those.