OpenStreetMap
The ongoing Coronavirus pandemic is changing everything.
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OSMF Board
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I arranged for the OSMF to get a BigBlueButton server:
https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/. This has since been used by a few local chapters & groups. The OSMF has signed up for a year. It’s hosted in Germany, and run by a European (Albanian) company. - Local Chapters
- To help outreach, I arranged for OSM Italy to present at the March board meeting. OSM Iceland is lined up for May board meeting.
- OSM US wants some changes & big fixes to the Local Chapter Contract, so we’re working with them on that. It looks close to closing. The Board & the working groups (LWG & LCCWG).
- OSGeo Oceania has applied to be a local chapter for Oceania. I’m helping with that application. Before community consultation (which yous would see), there is back & forth with the group to get the documents & details in order.
- I made some hacky scripts to analyze OSM history data. This should help with evaluating LC applications.
- DISCo (Diversity & Inclusivity Special Committee)
- We had a DISCo meeting, which was mostly a catch up
- I worked on improvements to the OSMF’s current Diversity Statement, but I must wait for a proper DISCo structure.
- I often promote Codes of Conduct, and I’ll have a private, good faith conversation with any OSMer about that.
- OSM US is re-evaluating their CoC, and have published a draft. I gave some feedback.
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The OSMF needs a written Conflict of Interest policy. I helped look over the draft, but we’re still not settled on something yet.
- The Board had a Board Meeting on 17th. We used the new BBB server, and had 30 attendees
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CWG
- As part of the OSM ProMatProg I tried to fulfil 2 sticker requests, but my local postal service isn’t delivering to large parts of the world right now, so they’ll unfortunately have to wait.
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Hacking
- I made some software to generate OSM heatmaps (& sourcehut).
- Based on that I explored the spread of
sporttagging in Ireland & Britain
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Mapping
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Still dong the Irish building mapping project. I mapped every day in April.
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Tagging
- There was a proposal for tagging AIDS/HIV testing facilities which I lightly contributed to.
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Community
- OSM Ireland had a week long
#StayHomeAndMapIRLseries of talks & focussed mapping. I gave a short talk about my JOSM tips. The videos haven’t been published yet. There’s a video of the buildings that were mapped. - Local city had an online video meetup („Stammtisch“).
- OSM Ireland had a week long
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For later
2951f2a0669727ca407f2ef0aa1aa9fccc371909127e18fc1d22933be7eb17b5b9036bab5fcef6a249a71dc8f777057bae1bbe6542a248aefe0f2ef41b2fe96b6023f38d37534911660ecd91da75f0355491747174a3e5364357147b3031b88acae677ae9fa42a77861632d210a48e99393b6d17f517c1bed55e7a3386882ce9
Previously: Mar 2020 Feb 2020 Jan 2020
(Do you know how long it takes to keep track of everything & write it up every month? 😛)
Discussion
Comment from imagico on 2 May 2020 at 09:20
You know we have had such conversations - but as said before i have yet to hear any serious moral defense of universal behavior regulation within the OSM community. Since i suspect most conversations along these lines will end up with this as one of the major issues (as it has happened in our previous conversations) i suggest to consider this as a basis if you want to have another chat about it.
By the way i am thinking about what changes i should suggest FOSSGIS to request in the local chapter agreement now that this apparently is turning into a cherry picking competition. Or is that a case of quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi and all local chapters are equal but some are more equal than others?
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 2 May 2020 at 11:34
I’m trying to parse this. If we have zero behavior regulation, if we have no floor, no bare minimum, then (for example) OSMers who persistently physically assault OSMers at SotM must not be banned from the project (right?). If we have no bare minimum for the whole project, then everything is allowed, right? IMO it’s obvious that from a consequentialist view, we should have a global list of unacceptable behaviours. (The next question is what should be unacceptable)
I view the changes as applicable to all new LC applications, and will offered to all existing LCs. There bugs. §10.2(b) clearly has an off by one error, and is hence silly. 😉 I’m curious what changes you suggest.
Comment from imagico on 2 May 2020 at 15:12
I commented on that (the specific case of a physical meeting) at length i think back in 2018
If you regard ‘allowed’ as a legal term then no, everyone of us lives in a jurisdiction that permits and forbids certain behavior.
If you look at it from a moral perspective then the answer is equally no - unless you subscribe to a nihilistic view of ethics.
One of the main problem with consequentialist approaches is that they are practically limited by your imperfection in predicting the consequences. To put it bluntly: If you are sufficiently ignorant you may be able to formulate behavior rules that are universally justifiable under a certain consequentialist framework. This is in particular a problem here because while you will likely be tempted to look only at the immediate consequences the rules you want to impose have, the communicative implications would reach much further than the actual rules. Or put more simply even: If you want to take a consequentialist evaluation of policy seriously you cannot only look at the intentional consequences, you also have to look at the unintentional ones - including those you might be too narrow minded to see. Otherwise you end up with the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
Since we all have our limitations in predicting consequences, in particular in the context of a project as unique and unprecedented as OpenStreetMap, i don’t think a purely consequentialist view is practically useful here. Still i would be interested in hearing what specific rule of behavior (and how it is meant to be imposed practically) you would consider justifiable from a consequentialist view.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 2 May 2020 at 19:25
Sorry, you’ve lost me. I don’t need to get into this level of philosophical abstraction to justify why I think we should kick people out who campaign to “Kill all Fags”.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 2 May 2020 at 19:27
Should we have a copyright/database licence? How can you justify that? Which of your arguments against CoCs cannot be used to say ”We shouldn’t have a database/copyright licence”
Comment from imagico on 2 May 2020 at 20:01
Moral considerations regarding the data license are mostly concerned with the rights of the mapper attached to their contributions. That is fundamentally different from the moral implications of imposing codified rules on the communication and social interaction between people.
Also the data license also not in any way restrict the mapper in what they may do with their contributions - they are completely free to allow others to use them beyond the scope of the license.
Regarding the need to justify behavior regulation - as an OSMF board member you do not need to justify decisions on that for communication within the OSMF - that is a political decision and you have the mandate from the OSMF members for that. Applying such rules to the whole OSM community however is a different story.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 3 May 2020 at 08:06
“Any mapper may do whatever they want with any data they contribute to OSM” That’s an interesting perspective. Ignoring derived work (!), can you provide a justification for this rule? (I can think of people & bodies who disagree)
Comment from imagico on 3 May 2020 at 11:39
I think this is a sidestepping the actual topic of behavior regulation quite a lot but i will indulge for a bit.
First of all - i don’t have to. This is what the law says, at least in all countries accepting the Berne Convention. Independent of that the moral justification for a person’s right to freely use their own recordings of thoughts and observations in my eyes stems pretty fundamentally from our self image as literate persons. Denying people this right would essentially amount to denying them the right for literacy. Even if you’d question this as a fundamental human right it would be blatantly inconsequential to within OSM - which pretty much requires literacy and the ability to record thoughts and observations from a mapper - to deny them the right for this for their contributions.
Note this is not the same as the moral justification for copyright, which creates an exclusivity for using their own work for the creator. That is something people have different opinions on which you could indeed discuss from a moral perspective. But that is not what you asked and that would also for the most part not be relevant within the context of OSM since the OSM license does make only very limited use of this exclusivity in principle granted by the law.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 5 May 2020 at 16:39
Ah! If you can rely on the Berne Convention, then I’ll reply with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. QED. 🙂
“Any mapper may do whatever they want with any data they contribute to OSM” doesn’t work with the EU’s Data Protection Directive (& Charter of Fundamental Rights). Can you justify throwing away these privacy rights? (other examples: military bases, copyright, family law report restrictions, defamation/libel, trade secrets)
Yes, this is a tangent, but I don’t think I understand you, so I’m curious what you would accept as justification for another matter, namely the OSM licence. And, to judge if you would apply this level of requirements to the OSM licence.
Comment from imagico on 5 May 2020 at 18:54
Comparing the UDHR as the non-binding declaration of ideals to the Berne Convention as a concrete agreement on binding rules of course done not work.
I also don’t see how the UDHR stipulates behavior regulation of person-to-person communication on equal level beyond what is covered by criminal law typically like slander etc.
As i have pointed out in osm.org/user/imagico/diary/392072#comment46519 practical attempts at implementing the UDHR into law in some form beyond criminal law generally does not apply to person-to-person relationships on equal level. And as said there i would be very much in favor of the OSMF introducing practically meaningful non-discrimination requirements to organizations like itself or companies w.r.t. individual community members.
I think your argument is flawed here. What you cite as moral/legal constraints limits what you may contribute to OSM in the first place, it does not restrict what you can do with data you may contribute to OSM.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 5 May 2020 at 19:15
I thought you were saying “I don’t see an universal moral justification for this”, instead of ”This international treaty-type thing was legally adopted by nation states in a different, less binding, way”. You do not seem to have as much of a fundamental objection as I initially thought.
What about the anti-discrimination parts of the human rights instruments like this? Nearly all anti-discrimination law regulations behavior in person-to-person communication & actions.
Data Protection law may or may not limit what information I can contribute to OSM. But it definitly also limits what I can do with that personal information outside the context of OSM. Data protecition law does prevent me from ”doing whatever I want with any data they contribute to OSM”.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 5 May 2020 at 19:17
I look forward to your justification for why the OSM project should require that everyone follow the ODbL.
Comment from imagico on 5 May 2020 at 19:37
Rory, i can completely accept if you don’t want to have a moral argument here but asking me to provide moral justification for arbitrary things feels a bit too much like being asked to jump through hoops just for your amusement. I already mentioned that the moral justification of copyright (and hence the use of copyright to impose and enforce a license) is a separate (and open ended) discussion. But this has absolutely no bearing on the matter of behavior regulation in social interaction and communication.
No, as said it restricts what i may contribute to OSM, it does not further restrict what i can do with stuff that i may and do contribute to OSM.
I would be eager to see you point me to a single law that does so. As mentioned the AGG explicitly does not. Is there any legislation where i (as a private individual) am forbidden to treat you in a certain way because you are not a woman unless the way i treat you is forbidden per se also if i equally treat everyone this way?
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 5 May 2020 at 20:01
I’m not doing it fun. And whether the OSM licence should be followed is a big deal. If you’re going to fall back on “copyright law is long established”, I’ll fall back on “laws that regulate how you can treat someone is long established”.
I’m having trouble parsing this. 😖 Can you rephrase? Are you asking for a law which says “If you do [thing] to a member of [group] it’s illegal, but it’s not illegal to do [thing] to people who aren’t in [group]?” Various rape laws apply to people based on their age, or mental disabilities. Some anti-discrimination laws only apply “in one direction”. Gender recognition laws for trans people probably can only apply to trans people (who have the certificate).
Comment from imagico on 5 May 2020 at 22:58
I am not, as said valid moral arguments can be both made for and against copyright - both in general as well as in specific domains like databases. I would be willing to discuss that - not here and not in lieu of the discussion on behavior regulation though - but only if you are seriously interested in deriving decisions from the result of this discussion and not if it is purely an academic exercise.
What you cited was an illustration. My main question was to you to point me to a single anti-discrimination law that regulates person-to-person interaction on equal level, i.e. not in a hierarchy (like between adults and kids and not between normal people and people with some official function or business operators etc.).
Please be specific. We are talking about legislation that has the purpose to protect human rights according to the UDHR by sanctioning certain person-to-person communication only if it happens in a discriminating fashion but not in general.
Comment from gendy54 on 11 May 2020 at 12:35
Many thanks for the BigBlueButton instance. It was really missing. Yesterday I was able to do an online training with a new contributor about Josm. It was great.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 28 July 2021 at 21:16
Well this is “later”
2951f2a0669727ca407f2ef0aa1aa9fccc371909127e18fc1d22933be7eb17b5-b9036bab5fcef6a249a71dc8f777057bae1bbe6542a248aefe0f2ef41b2fe96b-6023f38d37534911660ecd91da75f0355491747174a3e5364357147b3031b88a- $ echo -n “purple monkey dishwasher” | sha256sumcae677ae9fa42a77861632d210a48e99393b6d17f517c1bed55e7a3386882ce9-In retrospect, it was a bit silly to do this. I never bothered doing it again, and №1 & №4 were jokes, №3 about HOT didn’t need to be so super secret. I can’t remember why I thought it was secret. №2 is open now.