In preparation for the 2015 OSMF board election I am gathering basic info and question responses by candidate, to help people be better informed about their choices.

I’ve added annotations in italics where I felt they would be useful.

Peter Barth

• Location: Germany
• OSM User Peda
• Manifesto

Questions

Where do you currently participate in the OSMF?

I joined the Data Working Group about half a year ago, and have been helping to resolve disputes between mappers since.

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

Besides my work as a mapper and Data Working Group member, I have: * created and contributed to Open Source software related to OpenStreetMap, especially related to 3D rendering * mentored students doing OSM work during Google Summer of Code projects and theses * cooperated with government, industry and charity organizations on a local level * given speeches at various conferences, and contributed content to WeeklyOSM and the German Wochennotiz * introduced new users to OpenStreetMap through events, talks, and tutoring.

I believe this gives me a broad perspective on various aspects of the OSM project an community, and I hope to contribute my experience as part of the OSM board.

Do you use OSM at work for business purposes?

No. While I try to promote OSM at my university through bachelor and master theses, I actually have no work related affiliation to OSM.

Conflicts of Interest

No. See above.

Who should the OSMF serve?

Serving the needs of map users is an integral part of the usefulness of our project, but to me, the OSM community consists of mappers and software developers. And these groups are who I’d try to represent.

Role of the board

As I also cited in my manifesto, the OSMF should support but not control the OpenStreetMap project, and that should be taken as a guideline for the board’s actions. As a general rule, the board has to handle its duties but should not take care of things that could be done by the community as well. Anyway, to give you some ideas about things the board should get or is already involved in, here’s a list of things I think of: Assisting the working groups and also demanding from them (e.g. ask for reports,…), make the budget plan, possibly fund raising if needed, set up promotional programs, help and support local communities (e.g. local chapters), help organize SOTMs (including local ones), public relations, maybe launch merchandising, promote OpenSource tools everywhere in the project, dealing with inquiries of all kind (press, legal requests,…) and especially report about the board’s work. Though the board should not get involved in managing software development, setting up mapping rules or hiring staff. For more details, on some of these ideas, see my manifesto and the other questions.

Communication with the community

I’m subscribed to a large number of mailing lists as well (German and English ones), I follow the German ones more closely though. I read blogs (not only the official OSM ones), user diaries, the OSM Forum (German, 3D and Indoor mostly) and you will find me on a bunch of IRC channels. However, I read much of that especially to aid the Wochennotiz/WeeklyOSM. Of course you can meet me in person, either while mapping ;-) or at the regular’s table in Passau, the annual FOSSGIS event or hacking weekends or stuff like that.

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

I’m mostly part of the German community (and subcommunities in Germany), which is a very large community. What I’d like to reach is better geographic diversity: As stated in my manifesto, the OSMF might provide PR articles (or money therefore), the board could subsidize flights to SOTMs, help with money for regulars tables or talks about OSM and so on. These are points I’d like to bring to the board.

Paying People

As I stated before, I’m a strong opponent to paying staff. If something can be done by a volunteer, let’s try and search a volunteer. While it makes sense to engage e.g. a lawyer to handle a lawsuit for us, I have yet to see a suggestion for an employee that makes sense. Anyway, from the information the OSMF members get (the meeting minutes) you can see a small number of tasks which get handled late or not at all and it’s not convincing that the work load is so high that it needs to be outsourced. So I’d suggest to start with regularly reporting about each member’s work to see where help is needed and what options exist, instead of jumping to the conclusion that we need employees.

Board term limits

I wouldn’t pursue it, but I also wouldn’t work against it. Although there have been many and good arguments for term limits, I’d prefer to let the voter decide. Be it to implement or reject term limits or to vote the same person 20 times in a row.

Transparency

Well, I think there have been enhancements since Paul Norman is on the board, and I’ve been able to contribute a bit to that with my public encouragement of public board meetings. Nevertheless, there’s still room for improvements. Regarding my standpoint to transparency: I’m serving the community, so except for privacy issues I don’t see any reasons for intransparency. This includes publication of board members’ votes, which I fully support.

License violation enforcement

I think the current intended way of handling things is good: The OSM community may deal with violations locally, and complicated stuff will be escalated to the LWG. So if there’s anything that should be changed it’s to advertise volunteer involvement in the LWG.

Imports and remote mapping stance

In the past I often wondered about all the fuss about imports and mechanical edits. Having seen and stumbled upon a bunch of really messy imports, I have changed my mind. I’m still in favor for imports, but only if they strictly follow the Import Guidelines or Mechanical Edit Policy. I think they should be made even more strict and I think there should be a clear rule to revert everything that doesn’t adhere to these guidelines. However, this is my personal opinion only and nothing that should be worked on in the OSMF board.

Commercial and Organized Editing Policy stance

This is nothing the board can or should decide. But personally I’m absolutely in favor of such an collaborative (paid) editing policy. I think we should at least demand from such mappers that they disclose whom they work for and what they work on. Two name two rather strong arguments for such an policy: I’d like to know if 50 employees of company A vote on the wiki and I’d like to know if all of them use a controversial tag. Anyway, that’s something the community has to decide.