The OSMF board is making another survey of the OSM community and like with the last one i though i’d publish my answers. I think stating my opinion in public and this way inviting a public discussion of these matters is ultimately better than just having an asymmetric communication with the board through a survey.

How can we share your answers?

Does not really apply since i already publish the answers here.

But since i do not endorse collection of exclusive knowledge for the ruling class so to speak i chose the first option.

Are you answering as a group?

No

What is happening in your local community?

I am not really the right person to answer this on any level of locality.

What about your local community should be more widely known? What can other communities learn from yours?

One thing mapper communities in other parts of the world can see observing the German community is an example how and under what circumstances a hobby mapper community can grow organically.

Another thing is the professional OSM data user community in Germany being much more dominated by small and medium enterprises than in other parts of the world (in particular outside Europe) and how this supports technological and cartographic innovation.

Do you meet other mappers in person? Is there a local community beyond mapping?

Yes and yes.

(Note: If you want answers other than yes/no then don’t ask a yes/no question)

Are you engaged in the “global community”. If you aren’t, why not?

That’s a highly ambiguous question - both regarding what it means to be engaged and what “global community” means. There are no significant spatial limitations in my communication with others in relation to OSM. The most serious overall limitation is language which limits my active verbal communication to German and English. But i try to passively listen also to communication in other languages, in particular French, Russian and Spanish.

What do you think could improve the interaction between global and local communities? How can you help?

Same ambiguity here in what “global community” means. Main prerequisites for individual contributors to be motivated to contribute are being taken seriously, being able to affect something of substance and being treated as equals by those you interact with. A strict subsidiarity principle and meaningful federalism that controls and limits centralized power within the OSM community would be very helpful for that. Reducing organizational influences (like corporations and other institutions) that are not democratically legitimized within the OSM community and which inevitably do not treat individual contributors as equals would be another important measure.

Do you know who organises the global State of the Map conference? If you’re going to SotM, why? If you’re not going to SotM, why not?

I have visited SotM last year and am going to visit this year but am likely not going to visit in the future any more, primarily due to the lack of oversight and accountability in decision making and spending money (in particular in the scholarship program) and the lack of strict separation between sponsorship acquisition and conference planning.

More in depth commentary on SotM from me can be found on

• http://blog.imagico.de/sotm-milano-a-summary/
• http://blog.imagico.de/a-few-words-on-sotm-scholarships/

I read the following sources/channels:

I contribute to the following sources/channels:

• blog.openstreetmap.org (read, not aware that independent contributions are possible there)
• talk@openstreetmap.org (read and write)
• osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org (read and write)
• other OSM mailing lists (read and write)
• www.openstreetmap.org/diary (read and write)
• forum.openstreetmap.org (read and write)
• weeklyosm.eu (read and write)

Any other channels not listed?

• FOSSGIS-mailing lists
• RadioOSM podcast
• various independent blogs
• OSM messaging system
• changeset discussions
• OSM wiki
• various github issue trackers

What do you find the most and least useful/valuable/enjoyable of these channels?

Commercial platforms that make money from selling their users’ data and selling the users’ attention are the least attractive. Mailing lists are generally preferred over web forum because they allow free choice of software for reading and writing and i can freely filter contributions as i like. I am generally somewhat uncomfortable with channels under control of the OSMF because of the latent risk of censorship of content or people that are deemed undesirable by the powers that be since several OSMF board members have in the past expressed a desire to implement behavior regulation on OSMF channels.

WeeklyOSM quite definitely provides the most “value per word”. The most significant contributions to community discourse usually come from independent blogs, diary entries and mailing lists (in that order).

What is your primary OSM username?

imagico

In which country do you live?

Germany

(interesting that you only ask for the country of residence and not the cultural affiliation)

Where do you map mostly?

According to HDYC mostly Russia.

Do you remotely map other countries?

Yes

(that is a rather non-useful question, better would be to ask if i map also without local knowledge)

How often do you map?

sporadically

How long have you been mapping for?

Since 2012

How complete is your local area in your opinion?

Left empty because it expects a numerical answer

(This question frankly does not make much sense. If you’d specify for a handful of different areas in different parts of the planet the level of completeness i might also be able to also specify this for my area in analogy).

Check any of the following to describe your involvement in OpenStreetMap.

OSMF member, mapper, supporter (i guess), data user, developer, working at a company using OSM (only in the English version, not in German since i am self employed and it asks if i am ‘Angestellter’), local chapter member.

From your perspective, what 1 or 2 issues or outcomes should the OSM community prioritise, and why? Is there a role for the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board in making this happen? How?

The biggest long term challenge for the OSM community is to withstand and push back the massive external corporate and organizational interests that aim to influence and control the project and to give control of the project back into the hands of the individual hobby mappers and give them control and ownership of the map in all aspects and on all levels.

The OSMF board could do a lot to support this, specifically by preventing corporate and institutional interests from influencing OSMF policy decisions (through strict rules of eligibility for board members, through transparency of lobbying and decision making processes, through serious and robust conflict of interest regulations), by actually enforcing existing policy (including the license) w.r.t. corporations, by designing future policy to give individual hobby contributors a better standing against organized interests and most importantly by safeguarding the OSMF against hostile takeover attempts by giving away some of their own power and by installing oversight over their own actions through strictly and reliably community controlled bodies.

What are you doing yourself to address this? How can the OpenStreetMap Foundation help you achieve that?

What i do:

• Electing people to the OSMF board with no connection to institutional and corporate stakeholders.
• Demanding transparency from the OSMF in their work and decision making processes.
• Critically evaluating and if necessary questioning in public the decisions of the OSMF.
• Publicly countering corporate propaganda around OSM.

What the OSMF could do:

• See above for the board.
• The working groups could open their work more to the community (communicate more about it, more actively invite input) and insist on transparency internally, in their interaction with the board and with external interests.
• The OSMF members could largely be more active in overseeing the work of the OSMF board and the working groups, provide critique and input and initiate and engage in public discussion of matters of policy. They could and should also more frequently force policy decisions the board is either not willing or not able to initiate.

Generally: more transparency - daylight is the best weapon against corruption.

What would you like us to focus on in the next survey?

I think the focus of any survey should be on generating statistical data that can be publicly shared. A survey is not a substitute for open symmetric discourse.

For more extensive comments on surveying the OSM community see:

http://blog.imagico.de/on-surveying-the-surveyors/

Can we contact you with clarifying questions, or regarding possible actions related to your mapping priorities/top issues?

Sure

(but be prepared that i might also publish any answers to further clarifying questions)