tl; dr:

Firms like Apple, Facebook and Amazon are paying (their own) mappers for OpenStreetMap (OSM) edits. You are an OSM editor making the same type of work the paid editors are. Shouldn’t you be paid for your edits too? Let’s start sending these firms a collective invoice for our work and use the received funds to benefit the OSM ecosystem. There is an easy way to join if you use JOSM, but users of other map editors can participate as well.

The problem

The OSM project is governed by a license that allows its geo data to be freely used by anybody, including the most wealthy global corporations. Regardless, firms like Apple, Facebook or Amazon are paying for improving the OSM data. They do so mainly by hiring mappers, but also by directly sending money to the OSM foundation, albeit with grants that seem rather small in comparison to market capitalization of these firms. These developments - while good for improving the OSM data, raise also some issues. One concerns fairness: if the firms pay their employees/contractors for map edits, shouldn’t they pay to all who make the same kinds of edits? After all, the edits they provide are not special in any respect - volunteer editors have been supplying such data to the OSM database for years. A more subtle issue is, that emergence of paid map editors dramatically changes character of the project, which for most of its existence has been a purely volunteer affair. Increasingly, volunteer mappers can no longer point to “the Map” and say - we, volunteers did this. Others raised this issue as a problem, but no way out of it has been suggested so far.

The solution

In this post I try to advance an idea that we as a community embrace the “paid labor model,” but with an important twist. I propose we create time reports of our edits, have the reports independently verified and then ask the firms to pay for our labor what they pay their own Map editors. We will ask them to pay not us - the individual editors - but send the payments to the whole OSM project. After all we do not edit the map for the money, but we are also aware that the OSM project could always use more resources - to run and improve the server infrastructure, to reward programmers for creating and maintaining mapping tools, or to support mappers in developing countries, where we have an unfortunate coincidence of the greatest mapping needs on one, and a lack of “native” mappers on the other hand. If enough OSM editors start reporting their times, eventually - due to publicity the move is sure to attract - the OSM data consuming companies will start paying attention and take steps to control their public image.

To report our map editing times, we can use Rovas - an application of the community economic system NEO, where volunteers can record their labor time and earn a monetary reward in the form of NEO currency Chron. The currency can then be used to reward other NEO projects, sent to another users, or exchanged in Rovas for national currencies at market-determined rates. While the work reports can be created manually, JOSM users can use the Rovas Connector plugin, which automatically records editing time and when uploading the JOSM job to the OSM database, creates a work report in Rovas. The steps below show how to participate, if you use JOSM. If you use other applications, you can create the work reports manually in Rovas, or appeal to the creator of the application you use to program-in a link to Rovas. They can use the Rovas API.

Setup stage (one time procedure)

1. Create an account in Rovas
2. Install and configure the Rovas Connector plugin for JOSM

Using the JOSM plugin

1. Open JOSM and make edits. The plugin counts your working time automatically, starting immediately after JOSM opens.
2. when uploading the job, request to have a work report created in Rovas. The plugin will add you as a collaborator in the OSM Rovas project and create a work report on your behalf in that project.
3. Next the report must be verified. To do so, Rovas sends email invitations to two other users, who check the reported time against the proof of work - a link to the achavi application, displaying the edited changeset.
4. When approved, you get 10 Chrons for every hour of editing time. You can then use the money to reward other volunteers, exchange it for euros, or send them to (for example) the Rovas account of the OSM Foundation as a donation.

Creating the invoice

Periodically, the times in the OSM project will be added up and an invoice generated, addressed to the OSM data consumers. We will ask them to pay with their own volunteer labor measured in Chrons, or in national currency (USD). In the later case, we will recommend they use the hourly rate they pay their own mappers, in order to determine the payment amount. Rovas will convert the money into Chrons and reward the invoice recipient - the OSM project.

The OSM project can be set up in a way that funnels a set portion of the payment into a particular account, for example the one belonging to the OSM foundation. They can then periodically exchange their Chrons to Euros, or other national currency. Optionally, the project can be set up to convert all of the paid Chrons to non-monetary, reputation score called Merits that will get allocated to the participating users according to the time they report in the project. In this case the economic value of the payment will benefit the whole volunteer community, not a particular Rovas account holder. This is so, because during the payment paid Chrons get destroyed (changed to Merits) and the Chrons circulating in the economy gain more value against the national currency (there will be less Chrons in the NEO system).

The invoices will be published on a well-known, publicly accessible address on the web. A list of all companies that will have made a payment will be listed, in the descending order of the amount paid.

The expected outcomes

1. more money for the whole volunteer ecosystem and/or the OSM Foundation
2. the participating map editors earn community currency they can exchange for their local national currency. This might motivate more people to join the mapping efforts, especially in the poorly mapped areas of the world, where coincidentally even weak Chron exchange rate (against the national currency) can result in a better hourly rate than the minimum wage they could earn in the local economy.
3. participants can earn a publicly visible reputation reward, whenever the OSM project is rewarded. This kind of reward is universally known to work as a motivator to provide more labor (likes, reputation scores,…),
4. The OSM editing work reported is verified by at least two users, who might notice and act on any problems in the changesets refered to in the reports. This should lead to improvement of the OSM data quality.