thanks for your insights as a committed new mapper. lots here to think about and work on

A lot here. I just want to make a few corrections for the record.

In the absence of a visible history in the wiki (which would obviously be interesting here again in terms of transparency), it is difficult to say when exactly the sentence: “Is responsible for allocating $$ to diverse worthwhile software projects with grants and microgrants was added. “in the Mission statement page.

The version history is accessible but a little hidden in the template of this page (look at lower right for “More”). This could be improved for sure with a better color choice. Help welcome.

Looking at the full history, that bullet was added in December 2015, apparently based on previous discussion that year (which was before my current tenure, and I have not delved into…).

https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Mission_Statement&oldid=3461

It’s right that “$$” is a bit odd in our Mission Statement, but I think it’s simply a universal way to talk about “money” rather than a specific currency (which in practice is several). Anyway if that remains unclear or controversial, the Board can amend the statement.

Half of the available funds will thus have been spent in a single year, practically the equivalent of the Pineapple Fund donation spent on software projects outside the OSMF’s perimeter. The sustainability of this approach would be based on a fundraising strategy that has yet to be fully defined, given that the future economic context is particularly gloomy, that there has so far only ever been a single donation in excess of 100,000 Euros, and that the physical SotMs, a source of income for the Foundation, may not be organized in the coming years.

In August, we announced the approach to funding this without drawing on OSMF reserves. https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2020-August/006997.html

“To help fund this project, as well as the SSRE role, we’re looking at earmarked donations from companies, chapters and organisations.”

We’re not ready to announce the full results yet, but I can say that we will meet our fundraising goal and will not be required to draw on our reserves for this. Further, we are devising a longer term fundraising strategy to bring us sustainability in the coming years.

For my part, I would add the new tendency to create restricted committees whose members are chosen directly by the board (or whose selection is made through the caudal forks of one of the board members), which differs significantly from the practice of working groups open to any member who wants to get involved.

The committees are not fundamentally more restricted. All the working groups, and committees within groups, all have different qualifications expected of members and processes of approving new members. The Microgrants Special Committee did have a selection process, but was open to nomination by anyone. The Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee in open to people who want to actively contribute with no defined process (note we have been unfortunately been inactive).

Moreover, this action focused solely on technical needs completely ignores other major issues

I think it’s a mischaracterization to say the Board has only been focused on these issues, and that in fact the topic of takeover protection is being actively worked on. Yes it has been an issue for a while, it’s a complex topic. If funds might be needed to help investigate or implement ideas, the availability of funds is not a concern for the Foundation.

Hey Ivan, no need to remove comments, it’s of course fine to disagree, and if we misunderstand each other for a moment that’s ok. HOT is strong enough for some heated exchanges now and then.

Not to dwell on it, but to explain, some parts (“not a community vision we should strive to emulate”, “utterly inappropriate”) read like, let’s say, pretty strong push back. And phrases like “inward looking focus” and “specialist offshoot” are twisting my perspective. Felt compelled to push back too, unnecessarily (and btw, I’ve done plenty of parachuting myself). But let’s move on.

For sure, OSM has A LOT of issues. By working and contributing, HOT can help and make OSM stronger, which benefits very much what HOT wants to do.

What’s most interesting to hear is what HOT should be doing to prepare for the effort of Audacious.

One specific thing I read here about HOT is that you think the hub roles should require humanitarian experience but not OSM experience. It’s hard to imagine someone in this role who hasn’t had both experience in the international system, as well as technical and data worlds. Thinking about it now, critical will be a track record of “community values and local empowerment”. Tall order all together, and I’m excited meet these unicorns!

@Ivan Gayton, did I write something you didn’t like about HOT? Find your comments strangely combative and refusing reflection. This kind of divisiveness and distancing doesn’t serve HOT well.

I didn’t put OSM at the center right now, the Audacious grant did. And it’s long overdue. OSM isn’t only about maps and data, that’s a bad misconception on your part — it’s about people and community as well. You must admit the humanitarian sector does not broadly hold a strong community based vision and does not excel at building self reliance, so we should not look to it for a model. This is exactly why I started HOT 15 years ago — joining the values of OSM and for humanitarianIsm makes the entire endeavor more human and stronger.

Unfortunately I think HOT has become somewhat too enmeshed in the humanitarian system, reproducing dynamics like yes northern white men in long term leadership positions in places like Tanzania. Yes the HOT board is diverse, but compared to the staffed operation it has not been in the forefront of the organization for the past 5 years. I think that should change, as I said in my post.

And yes the OSMF Board has recognized the problems in its diversity and our community. The vision is one where people everywhere are empowered to make the map and use to improve their lives. But a statement or a vision is only a start, there is a lot of work to do.

So yes back to work.

Thanks @blackboxlogic. Agree with the general thrust of what you say here and appreciate the analysis. Documentation and discussion of data sets for imports are key. I think there is confusion about the term “import”; there’s an impression that it only implies to imports worked on in bulk, not when the workflow evaluates each new feature individually. The import guidelines apply to third party data sets whatever the workflow is for bringing in features, and if the edit is in bulk, then likely also the mechanical edit guidelines should be addressed as well.

I don’t agree with everything here. For instance, I think these issues could be addressed quickly without taking mapswith.ai offline. And I don’t see how Organised Editing Guidelines apply, since no one is compelled or required to do this editing.

-Mikel (my personal opinion. I’m an OSMF Board Member and employee of Mapbox)

Thanks for you comment @Tyler! And for going into helpful detail on points I only gave a glancing take on.

Thanks Mike and Facebook for doing this. It’s great to have this insight out and available. There’s a good tradition of downstream data processing and redistribution in the community (you could call them packages I supposed) – from GeoFabrik’s regional and country downloads, to OSMQATiles, etc.

In this case (and I focused on this when we spoke), I’m not sure that the most valuable thing to distribute is what made it through Facebook filters, but rather what didn’t make it through and why. That insight is valuable to identify problems that need fixing on a faster basis, notify local communities and other editors, and to build up a corpus of understanding of what problematic edits in OSM look like.

The most actionable way to do this distribution will be through OSMCha. Through the OSMCha API, you can flag changesets/features with reasons, and can be set up so that any reason tag by Facebook has a “Facebook:” prefix.

This is what Mapbox has set up. The Mapbox Streets Review team looks at edits every day, and problems are flagged and surfaced in OSMCha. You can see all of this with this OSMCha filter. You’ll see the most recent flag as about 3 days ago – that’s the typical time between OSM edit and review / publishing in Mapbox Streets.

Adding in Facebook flagged problems to OSMCha would provide even stronger signal of problems, and hope to explore implementing it with you all.

Do you have a sense of the intention of this law? Seems unlikely they’d have OSM in mind, but more likely commercial providers. What’s the risk that enforcement will actually focus on OSM activity?

@᚛ᚏᚒᚐᚔᚏᚔᚋ᚜ 🏳️‍🌈 Is that the fundamental contradiction being discussed here? Because I took @SimonPoole to be saying that diversity and mapping values are not in conflict, but that any value statement beyond mapping is not necessary. Which I don’t agree with obviously. But if the real question is tolerance of intolerance within the domain of OSM itself, that’s a whole other thing.

Ah that’s interesting. I don’t think it matters what happens outside of OSM but what happens within OSM that’s important. So if my wife goes to Saudi Arabia, she’ll need to cover my head. But if a Saudi prince reverts all her OSM edits from data she collected on the trip because she’s a woman, that’s not ok.

Support but not control is one of many values that OSMF has had to work within it among a dynamic interplay of other values. OSMF is the legal entity that hosts the servers and holds the license, etc. There’s absolutely a tension there which we have continually navigated as an organization and project.

I’m baffled by the general idea that one value cancels out another. As if by saying all are welcome, that we no longer care about mapping?! In most societies, the actions and decisions by members of society result from an interplay of values.

OSM was started to create the best map of the entire world. The vision was that simple and big from the start. Anyone who needed map data could create it themselves, and work to enable others to do so too. Because that would result in the best map. It turned out to be pretty fun too. There was no line between hobbyist and professional — all contributed, individuals moved through different roles, and all marveled at what doing this work together could make in the map and the impact it could have on the world. SteveC was clearly looking at upending the geodata industry, not to end corporate use but enable even more of it. I was motivated to upend how data was shared for disaster response, and started HOT. There’s as many motivations as there are contributors, and that’s great and something we can celebrate. There’s no contradictions in this, or necessity to create a hierarchy of values. It all works hand in hand and is wonderful.

Does anyone know how “wheelchair” became so popular?

Believe that is in large part due to https://wheelmap.org/. They did a great job of advocating for it, and showed how it could be useful. This is much in the spirit of OSM, where people and groups of people take initiative, and other parts of the ecosystem adopt.

Thanks Christoph, you’ve given us a lot to think about. You’re certainly the most in depth moral philosopher operating in OpenStreetMap. While I can’t claim to understand all the ins and outs of your argument, I don’t think your points substantiate the idea that OSMF is on the precipice of becoming an illegitimate, capitalistic, dominating force.

First on context. We actually approached the Python Foundation to see if they were ok with us adapting their statement. Also the topic of diversity has been present since the very early days of the project, and certainly active topic in the Foundation for over 5 years. I agree the collective outrage was over the top, but it was not that episode that motivated us. This has been a long time coming.

I do think you bring up a number of good specific points about the text we should consider and would improve it, and that’s where I’d like to focus.

• Link the diversity statement to the values of OpenStreetMap. Very good point, and I think something we should consider adding. There’s a number of documents/wiki pages/discussions on the topic of values, so might take some clean up there as well. osm.wiki/Foundation/Core_Values
• Including language in the list of attributes of diversity that is valued. And I think we can better explain that we want and need linguistic diversity. As a practical matter the OSMF conducts business in English, but there must be ways to be more inclusive to people who are not proficient in English.
• The points about nationality vs national origin and politics seem minor, since I don’t think anyone would be legitimately confused by them. However there is probably better phrasings to consider.

Thanks @MarissaD. I did post on Twitter and it got good distribution, as well as many OSM channels.

My take on the Board election, yes there were few candidates, and that reflects a probable lack of diversity in the Foundation, at least people active in Foundation activities. I very much like the idea of mentorship on how to get more involved in the Foundation. It’s an offer I personally plan to make, and will also ask other Board members to make the offer as well.

@Ferdinand0101 I get it, but I don’t think it’s helpful to call people unfamiliar with GIS and programming “normal” – though you are right, OSM editing is pretty weird and unusual, in a good way. Totally agree that showing how approachable OSM can be would be helpful to expand contributors, especially to focus on observation of our world – that’s the most interesting part of OSM.

Not to belabor a point, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say women are less interested in tech. It’s right to notice that women are less represented in some science and technology fields, and that OSM with its roots in open source communities in part reflects that. The reasons are complex and big, and I’ll be interested to hear from people less represented in our community what those reasons are. One thing I believe is that if people don’t see people like themselves somewhere, it does feel hard to invite yourself in.

Thanks for the comments so far. Would love to hear from more people, and hear from people interested to join and work in this group.

@seav A couple additional thoughts after @”joost schouppe”. In order to know if the fee waiver program improves diversity, we need to know what the Foundation membership looks like now, and what it looks like in the future. And once someone joins the Foundation, what is the experience like for them? and where does the Foundation benefit?

@”Mateusz Konieczny” take the broader point that if OSM were more well known, it could attract more diverse participants, but we should think more about all the channels OSM can access, and really does not take advantage of – we have great stories but don’t tell those stories widely. Certainly having better localized tagging guidance would be useful, and could attract similar enthusiasm to translation. Yes, a compendium of previous research and discussion would be helpful. And agree we could look more widely at how other communities approach diversity, but reckon that open technology oriented communities are going to have enough similarities to make for interesting lessons. I’m not familiar with what happened on StackExchange.

@”Valor Naram” I think you mean well, but I don’t recognize OpenStreetMap as you describe it. There are a lot of in person events around the world with OSM, and they’ve been critical to building our community. I’m not sure what a “normalo” is, but it doesn’t sound that great, and in fact there are plenty of people who do not have a heavy tech background involved in OSM. Women are in fact very interested in technology, but there are many factors that lead to less participation generally; you might be interested to read about the history of women in computing on Wikimedia, which highlights that the early days of software development was dominated by women.

Haha I heard that statement on the radio this morning and thought “Frederik would like this”.

Anyway I asked some unanswered questions above about whether looking at big companies as single entities with a totally aligned approach or more appropriate as a bundle of interests like governments themselves.

One thing we can agree, that first thread wasn’t a great discussion and Twitter makes it too easy to promote unhelpful outrage.

I would love a thoughtful and civilized conversation. I wish I saw that more on osm diaries and osmf-talk too.

Unfortunately I don’t get much opportunity for that with Christoph, where my actual thoughts are assumed, twisted, and ultimately disregarded. Maybe some day he’ll see the different between his phantom version of me and the reality.

It doesn’t feel very good to be told by someone that you are reacting exactly how they expect.

There were many branches of discussion coming from this post on Twitter. All of the newly elected board members have jumped in somewhere https://mobile.twitter.com/HeatherLeson/status/1205892966428106757

Allan has also opened up another thread after the board meeting https://mobile.twitter.com/allan_mustard/status/1209879368400539649

I am not claiming that these twitter discussions represent anything like a comprehensive set of voices from OSM.

I fail to see how my words here or at any other point connect to what you write about ”engineering pseudo diversity” or an ”English language debate club”. I get the impression that here, and often in other discussions, you are reacting to a phantom version of myself and my views which have little to do with reality.

I do appreciate your point about linguistic and cultural diversity. It’s something I’ve paid close attention to throughout my work and efforts in OSM around the world, in myriad situations.

I do not presume the answers for how osmf should approach the issue of diversity and inclusion, but will focus on what is the right structure to move ahead.