The OSMF is having a board election, with voting opening this weekend. The questions to candidates are arranged by question, but I wanted to see the responses of each candidate together, so I rearranged them, and sorted the questions into an order I think makes some sense.

Because this is going to end up being long with 11 candidates, I’m splitting into multiple diary posts. I’ll link them all together after publishing, but I can’t do that yet.

Candidates

• Ilya Zverev
• Peter Barth
• Guido Stein
• Mikel Maron
• Joseph Reeves
• Ryan Peterson
• Wille Marcel
• Gonzalo Perez
• Martijn van Exel
• Douglas Ssebaggala
• Yantisa Akhadi

Guido, Ryan, Gonzalo, and Douglas have not responded to most of the questions.

Mikel and Joseph have not responded to some of the questions.

Questions

The questions are reproduced below.

Where do you currently participate in the OSMF?

Most OSMF participation and work is done through working groups. What working groups are you on, and if you’re currently not participating in any, why not?

Which contributions to OSM should I consider for my decision beyond your data edits at OSM?

Please give me a short list of your contributions to OSM (both editing and programming). Do you have edit via multiple OSM accounts which are not listed at Foundation/AGM15/Election_to_Board? Which OSM related software and websites do/did you develope? Please give me a short list and/or a link to your Github profile.

Do you use OSM at work for business purposes?

Do you use OSM at work for business purposes? Do you earn money by developing OSM-related software/websites? Do you earn money by editing at OSM (aka paid mapping)?

Conflicts of Interest

Do you work for a company or are involved with organizations that are working with OSM in some form? If yes how do you plan to handle situations where the interests of this company/organization and the interests of those you would represent on the board diverge?

Who should the OSMF serve?

Formally the OSMF board is elected by and therefore should serve the OSMF members. But anyone can be an OSMF member as long as he/she pays the membership fee. Whose interests do you think you will primarily try to represent if elected to the board? This will likely be the ‘OSM community’ in some form but this is a fairly inhomogeneous group consisting of mappers, software developers, map designers, map users and others so please try to clarify on your priorities.

Role of the board

What do you see as being matters that the board should or should not get involved with?

Communication with the community

Which communication channels do you use to stay informed and talk to the community?

Community involvement in OSMF

The very limited involvement of OSM community members in the OSMF, visible in the membership numbers, limited involvement in working group and participation in elections, has been a big topic and before the last elections there have been fairly bold statements towards improvements here but not much has happened. Although there is now a possibility to become a member without paying the membership fee there is still quite a high hurdle to become a member and participate in decision processes of the OSMF. Do you have ideas how to improve community participation you intend to push forward if elected to the board? There have for example been suggestions for automatic membership for active community members

Diversity

Diversity - both geographic and otherwise - is a big topic for many in the OSM community. Please describe in what way you think your presence on the OSMF board would serve diversity in OSM. Would you bring a particular viewpoint to the board that is important to be represented there? Do you represent or have intense connections to a local community or other interest groups whose interests you plan to bring forward during your time on the board?

Paying People

Many manifestos suggest the OSMF Board should be doing more, we aren’t adding more board members. How can the board accomplish more with the same number of people? What are you views on paying people to accomplish some tasks that for whatever reason can’t be accomplished by volunteers?

Board term limits

The idea to limit the duration for which an individual can be a member of the OSMF board has been an important subject of discussion and also subject of a special resolution put up for vote during the 2014 special general meeting which received a majority but failed to pass the necessary 75% threshold. Since then the current board has not made a decision on this matter. What is your standpoint on this and would you pursue a change in the OSMF articles to implement such a term limit?

Transparency

Transparency of the OSMF board’s work has been a big topic in the last election. There have been changes on this matter since then, for example there has been the first public board meeting but there have also been controversial points like the question if individual board members votes in board decisions should be made public. Please describe your standpoint on Transparency in the OSMF and its board’s work - both in general and what changes in this regard you would like to pursue if elected.

License violation enforcement

The OSMF formally holds the rights to the OSM data or in other words is entrusted by the mappers to legally administer their work. There are mechanisms in use, primarily involving the license working group, to deal with cases of license violations, most notably missing or insufficient attribution. What is your opinion on this situation? Do you think the current mechanisms work? Do you think there is need for changes in the way such cases are handled and if yes how should such changes look like?

Imports and remote mapping stance

Among OSM mappers both data imports and remote ‘armchair’ mapping are controversial subjects and are discussed frequently from practical to philosophical levels. Please describe your standpoint on the matter and (if that applies) your practical experience with these.

Commercial and Organized Editing Policy stance

OSM has become important as a source of geospatial data for the last years and nowadays we have couple of companies and organzisations mapping at OSM. In difference to the community these people often lack the intrinsic motivation most mappers have. They only do what they are told to do and only do it because they get paid for it. Should their be a guideline similar to Automated Edits Code of Conduct and Import Guideline which rules the activities of commercial mappers and mappers which are part of courses (at schools, universities etc.)? What should it rule? Note: DWG has suggested such a policy in May 2014.