Having business on the map makes sense, particularly those that are open to the public. I’ll leave others to debate how best to do this but on the question “How do you get an owner to submit their business?” perhaps look at how others do this, e.g. google maps. Last time I looked, it wasn’t all just web scraping; they did have a site that owners could go to provide detail about the stores they operate. And of course google also asks for crowdsource info here.

Nice example Richard (and much nicer wording in the router than my suggestion above). This is one example which is just those extra few meters apart that it is not right to connect the roads. What I’d call a classic staggered crossroad. No idea how common they are outside the UK though.

@DUGA: I agree with you on number 1. My point was that it can be down to individual opinion. For example if the road was an extra 1m, 2m, or 5m offset, would you still join them…? (Not an actual question I want answering, just making the point that it isn’t always clear)

In example 1: how much further apart should the roads be before you don’t join them? It’s not always easy to know!

Instead of “Turn right and then turn left” routers could say “go over the staggered crossroads” or something similar.

I’ll be testing the MVT support out when I find time. I’m still new to this so any links to worked examples / tips much appreciated. For example, for MVT in JOSM I leaned that I needed to point the custom URL to a style.json file. Is it the same principle in Vespucci?

(Sorry if that’s a really novice question - I play around until I get stuff to work rather than understanding what to do!)

Sounds good. Tip: There is an overlay layer that you can add to help with alignment. It should appear under the name “OSM UK cadastral parcels” or similar. This shows the correct position of land ownership. Once loaded there should be a way to adjust the position of the aerial imagery to align to these before you continue with mapping. This is useful because the aerial imagery is not always that well aligned.

If in doubt, ask as I can provide some images/further help.

Cheers Rob

if the firms pay their employees/contractors for map edits, shouldn’t they pay to all who make the same kinds of edits?

If you want to get paid then you could try applying for their jobs as and when they become available. Of course it would mean that you are no longer free to map what you want - as an employee you will be instructed what to map.

Personally I will continue to contribute what I want to work on as an unpaid volunteer. I will also continue to benefit from the sponsorship that these companies pay to e.g. State of the Map and other projects that are able to make a positive case for what they are doing.

In summary: I don’t believe humiliating organisations in to paying OSM more will work (it’s also a failure to understand our data licence as we give data for free not for a fee). In fact it is likely to have the opposite effect and take money away from things like State of the Map. Instead we would be better to focus on making positive cases for projects that benefit both sides.

What about:

• Map group Asia Pacific (supported by HOT)
• Mapping Asia Pacific (supported by HOT)
• Maps for good: Asia Pacific (supported by HOT)
• Map plan …
• Base Map …

There’s got to be a play on either of the words “coordinates” or “landmark” too but these might only work in English!

Also maybe:

• HOT Map Series: Asia Pacific

If you are dissatisfied with the progress in some parts of the community then demonstrate how it can be done better. Set up a discourse instance for OSMUK and demonstrate to the rest of the community how useful it is.

OSMUK is already overstretched. That, and seeing others clearly overstretched, is why we added this to the agenda. We wanted to discuss ideas that go beyond “just do it yourself” or “just ignore the fact that you’ve identified a potential improvement as someone will get to it eventually”. We need support and I suspect other groups much smaller than OSM UK do too. We therefore wanted to discuss ideas for helping each other out.

By the way, the “discuss the idea and if it’s good, people will come” works to a degree, but there is now a long back log of ideas which non developers (and developers) have indicated are good. We wanted to discuss how we tackle these.

If you have suggestions, please share. Without those suggestions, then yes, we do have a systematic problem.

In der Diskussion ging es in erster Linie um Discourse wenngleich Rob auch versucht hat, das Webseite-Thema mit anzuhängen. (The discussion was primarily about Discourse, although Rob also tried to add the website topic).

I actually wish I had not included the examples at all because the agenda item was how to make more progress on infrastructure items that in general are stuck. Adding the examples just resulted in a discussion about Discourse which was not my aim. I was hoping that the AB might be able to advice on some ways to increase the amount of work done on infrastructure (stability of which was a topic that came out high in the survey).

Also I note that in quite a few places you’ve written things like “seems like”, or “I assume this means”. Given that you were in the meeting you should have asked. Some of your assumptions are plain wrong and could have been clarified if you’d asked.

I will also use the Power Point 365 facility for rendering speech to text so that anyone who can read English can read subtitles as I speak.

How do you do that (as a presenter not a viewer) as I cannot seem to find the option and would like to use it as well?

On the database rights topic, we might actually still be protected depending on whether our EU mappers can be called “makers”. Here are some things to look in to:

“[The sui generis database rights] shall apply to a database whose makers or right holders are nationals of a Member State or who have their habitual residence in the territory of the Community” (Source: Notice to stakeholders– Withdrawal of the United Kingdom and EU rules in the field of copyright 28 March 2018)

And

“Whereas the objective of the sui generis right is to give the maker of a database the option of preventing the unauthorized extraction and/or re-utilization of all or a substantial part of the contents of that database; whereas the maker of a database is the person who takes the initiative and the risk of investing; whereas this excludes subcontractors in particular from the definition of maker;” Source: Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases

And within OSM:

“When you upload data to OSM, you remain the copyright holder of your data, but you grant certain rights to the OpenStreetMap Foundation under the Contributor Terms.” (source: osm.wiki/Legal_FAQ)

Given that many of our mappers live in the EU, then does this not mean that the database continues to be protected if they are “makers”? It might be worth exploring that avenue. Are our mappers in the EU “makers” in the sense that they took on the initiative and risk when they decided to contribute to OSM? If they are then do they continue to hold sui generis database rights? If instead they are “subcontractors” then they would not hold any right, but as we are not contracting them to go out and map (they map what they please) they’re probably not subcontractors. Makers seems to fit in my mind. Worth asking for legal advice.

The “UK method” is appropriate for large organisations but adds significant extra work for smaller organisations. I can confirm that OSM UK does not do do this.

If you want a low effort, high gain change, then one suggestion would be that Local Chapters have to offer out any work to the community prior to taking it on themselves. The OSM UK Local Chapter does this. Each time we are approached to do paid work, we share the scope of the work openly with our community. Anyone is free to apply to do this work and the company can pick who they want without interference from OSM UK. This has been successful on several occasions for us. In other instances nobody came forward to do the work. In those cases the OSM UK Local Chapter did the work via one or more of the board members and the money raised went in to the OSM UK account for use on OSM UK projects.

If you ban Local Chapters from engaging in paid work, then you reduce the number of ways that Local Chapters can raise money. Less money means less ability to support the local community.

Good to see the Mapbox layer I created getting some use :-)

I think we should let each local group decide what works best for them. We should therefore not add extra rules that might work well in some parts of the world but not in others.

On clauses in the Articles of Association, my own experience of helping to set up OSM UK is that you should be really careful what clauses you add to the Articles of Association. Every extra clause makes it harder to do something and what might seem like a good idea at first, could cause you more trouble that what it is worth. I think it is much better to define principles but allow flexibility. With regular elections the board can be held to account if the local community feel it is deviating too far from the principles.

Summary: Let local groups decide and ensure that the local members can elect new directors / vote on resolutions if they feel the need to change direction.

As an aside, I suspect it it these UK statutory rules that has led Mike to state that “My candidacy for the OSMF board has been vetted by communications and legal representatives at Facebook”. As in, his employer would have needed to understand that Mike’s duties to OSMF are significant and legislated above his duties as an employee of Facebook. They would have wanted to understand and agree to this.

I had exactly the same when I was a director of OSM UK. My employer, which is completely outside the geospatial industry, needed to assess and agree my candidacy. It was then kept on their conflict of interest records. It’s all pretty normal practice across not just OSM but in all other sectors.

Hi ndrw6,

I’m not sure if you are aware, but all new (and existing) directors have to comply with significant legal duties of being a Director. It’s worth reading the following link if you’re not aware. It sets out that directors need to promote the company (OSMF in this case), apply their own independent judgement (and not that of someone else or an employer) and avoid/manage conflicts of interest.

I trust all directors to understand and take seriously these statutory duties. If they don’t then they will be in beach of primary legislation and can be prosecuted.

Being a Director is a privilege and one that people should take very seriously. As I’m sure all those standing for election do.

I’m summary, voting in a director who happens to be employed by another company is not giving a company control or representation on the OSMF board as that would be a direct beach of the law.

https://companieshouse.blog.gov.uk/2019/02/21/7-duties-of-a-company-director/

Aside: A note on timing:-
Proposals to change the Articles of Association require a “Special Resolution”. To pass at least 75% of the votes cast must be in favour of the Special Resolution. Under sec283(6) of the Companies Act 2006 the full text of a Special Resolution must be included within the notice of the meeting. Unlike OSM UK, the OSMF have not specified a longer notice period in their Articles of Association, as such I believe the notice period is 14 days. With the meeting planned for 12 December, this means that the notice has to go out on or before 27 November. This means that the members, and only those who view the osmf-talk mailing list, have been given just 5 weeks to consider and discuss a proposal. They have not been briefed on the results of any legal counsel and therefore do not have a complete picture. Are changes to the Articles of Association even the best way to reduce the risk of a takeover? Nobody knows as nobody has seen the legal advise!

My second, smaller comment relates to training and other impacts on WG members:

Has the board considered what training it may need to provide to the working group members to help them switch to any new tools/platforms they will be expected to use? Has the board considered how much extra volunteer time it will consume to adjust to new systems? This does sound a bit petty but volunteer time is precious. When I was on SotM WG I used the tools I knew as they did the job and allowed me to focus on what mattered (i.e. the conference and scholarships). Having to learn alternatives would have diverted my attention from the core tasks.

Wow lots and lots of amazing work. Well done and thank you.