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<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">OSMF Board conflict of
interest policy is on the OSM wiki here:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Conflict_of_Interest_Policy">https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Conflict_of_Interest_Policy</a></font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Conflicts of interest
are governed in part by UK law:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/175">https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/175</a> This
imparts any required formality.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">The exact wording in
the CoI policy reads, "Board Members should keep their
biographies up to date, including any relevant positions or
relationships." As I have been reliably informed by speakers of
British English (in which word usage differs in some cases from
that of American English, my native tongue), "should" in this
case connotes what we in the United States would articulate as
"must", and thus conveys an obligation somewhat more stringent
than an "expectation". In any event Board members have been
quite diligent in hounding each other to keep their biographic
sketches up to date, and in assuring that anyone with a
perceived conflict of interest abstains from voting.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">cheers,<br>
apm</font><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 8/4/2021 8:25 AM, Edward Bainton
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAGJTS20r8txbpeY2=qr0An-76ypkZ1jpDsTCc7Fv1eQGXkWizw@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">Conflicts of interest are inevitable in any org.
The question is whether they're disclosed, and once disclosed
how they're managed.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This issue rightly generates a lot of heat, and some even
more radical openness may help. It might be good to require -
in the constitution of local chapters and as a condition of
recognition by OSMF - that all interests of local chapter
board members are clearly stated in a standard format in a
standard place.
<div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I would suggest OSMF could lead the way there. In the
past Allan has pointed me to the OSMF board members' bios
as places to find their interests listed. That's a great
start, but imo doesn't give it the required formality. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>There's also only an 'expectation' on a board member to
keep their bio up to date (I hope I'm recalling Allan's
words correctly), rather than a hard requirement built
into the constitution, and that would be much better, imo.
(Not so long ago it was a legal requirement for a UK
company to keep an register of directors' interests.)</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, 4 Aug 2021 at 12:37,
Mateusz Konieczny via osmf-talk <<a
href="mailto:osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org"
moz-do-not-send="true">osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div>But it is perfectly fine to prefer people without
conflict of interest when selecting leaders.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Aug 3, 2021, 22:24 by <a
href="mailto:heatherleson@gmail.com" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">heatherleson@gmail.com</a>:<br>
</div>
<blockquote style="border-left:1px solid
rgb(147,163,184);padding-left:10px;margin-left:5px">
<div dir="auto">
<div>Dear Bert<br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">"<span><span
style="font-family:sans-serif"><span
style="font-size:12.8px">Local chapter board or
leaders should not be affiliated with any
financiers or specific interest groups. No
Facebook, no MapBox, no Apple, no Google, no
TomTom etc... NO HOT"</span></span></span><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">With all due respect, this is an "open"
community. I or anyone should not be excluded because
I have a job or belong to any community. To restrict
this is to not be "open".<br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Thank you<br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Heather <br>
</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div dir="ltr">On Tue, 3 Aug 2021, 15:44 Bert -Araali-
Van Opstal, <<a
href="mailto:bert.araali.afritastic@gmail.com"
rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">bert.araali.afritastic@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid
rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>Who is insulting who ? I don't recall having said
anything insulting or saying anything in the line
that "all the contributions HOT is making are
useless or garbage", in the contrary.<br>
</p>
<p>I understand it's hard to swallow criticism,
especially when you are involved for a long time,
but you don't address it by replying or targeting
personally. It underlines that there is an issue,
both in handling, dealing, discussing and
addressing the issues raised or proving that they
are based on incomplete or misrepresented actual
situation.<br>
</p>
<div>Of course, in some cases, those which can be
categorized as non-crisis responses or other
organisations working through the HOT Tasking
manager are local individuals, happy to be so.
This doesn't change the fact though that HOT, let
it be clear with all it's good intentions, fails
as much as OSM as a community to reach and
activate local communities in less fortunate and
IT savvy regions.<br>
</div>
<div> And as stated before, more and more, advocates
and actively implements policies that contradict
with OSM's "Good practices", philosophy and
primary objectives. This includes ruling local
chapters, using the same policies and tools for
nearly all their activities. Is that saying HOT
should stop this, all what HOT is doing is useless
or bad, no it isn't. It is an observation of what
has happened, how HOT's activities have evolved
and how it's moving towards a model that is very
different from the core of OSM and it's vibrant
community. OSM doesn't want to become HOT, not in
Africa not in other places. As much as OSM doesn't
want to become wikipedia, Facebook, Google or
Microsoft. OSM and it's community efforts and data
needs protection against these, and we have a
policy against to preserve it. <br>
</div>
<div> We need OSM to be independent from HOT and
similar organisations, the companies and their
tools. And we have made procedures and guidelines
to do so, by the community and with consensus of
the community.<br>
</div>
<div>The basic principles favoured by HOT, is that
it advocates primarily the use of satellite
imagery as a tool to respond to humanitarian
crisis. OSM primarily wants to map ground truth,
capture local knowledge and local interests in
geodata. Satellite imagery, AI data, authoritative
or reliable external data sources or organised
mass edits are secondary, supporting tools for
these primary goals. If they have no added value,
in the opinion of the local or global OSM
community, overrule or are a motivation to delete
what was already there, the use is discouraged or
should be abandoned.<br>
</div>
<div> This is expressed in the procedures, training
materials etc... by HOT. As an example: how to
deal with offsets, where Bing is referred as "the
golden standard" in case local information like
GPS tracks is missing. If that information is
missing, the policy should be to gather the ground
truth, not rely on satelite imagery, which still
after all these years of development, suffers from
significant inaccuracies in post-processing and
stitching together the images, especially in
mountainousness areas or those areas that lack
high quality and stable control and validation
points.<br>
</div>
<div>I am not surprised by the many answers received
here. They illustrate the tendency of HOT to move
away from the primary tools we as an OSM community
try to sustain and improve. True, of course with
all their flaws, and at a slow stride, inherent
characteristic to the type of community we are and
want to be and our mode of operation based on
volunteers.<br>
</div>
<div> As such, there is nothing wrong with that, as
long as the primary tools and community are
respected. A means of respect to the OSM name you
are permitted to carry, doesn't come with
attribution only, but also respect for it's
community and how and where it wishes to operate.
The OSM wiki is not updated with project or
organised editing guidelines, the use of mailing
lists is very poor. <br>
</div>
<div> With all respect for Pierre and other HOT
supporters, but once you reach the state of
handing over from a HOT initiative to the
community, to OSM, trust and follow the
guidelines, as the community tries to do. Trust
that no one will fundamentally change your initial
wiki page without consultation, we have a history
to follow up on that. Policies in the use and
contribution of OSM are hardly ever discussed
within the OSM forums. A motivation like we mostly
use "telegram, facebook, whatsapp etc... because
that is what the locals mostly know and use are
easy solutions and justifications to deviate. It
is not different from the situation in other
regions where OSM is more successful. Actually, it
should be a motivation to promote those very OSM
channels, as they have proven respect for privacy,
inclusion and they work to have more deep
discussions. Don't take the easy path, take the
hard one, as it's proven even the easy path isn't
giving substantial results and declining. It is
not just limited to social media, also other tools
like zoom, google drive, eventbrite etc... are
intensively used and promoted. Gaps where OSM is
filling in with BigBlueButton and Nextcloud, using
it's financial resources and, in the cases where
OSMF has not yet provided an alternative, the
preferred ones are identified, in many cases open
source and free alternatives are readily
available.<br>
</div>
<p>And that is where it comes to the "ruling"
statement. Local chapters are established, by HOT,
with HOT funds, by HOT supporters or employees.
Using these very policies and HOT primary goals.
The members are HOT volunteers or HOT affiliated
or related organisations. Using HOT tools as the
tasking manager, the HOT promoted or supported
channels. Essentially, creating a conflict of
interest, proposing a HOT centred approach of
mapping in OSM. Allow me to quote Pete Masters
response:<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">Once a community or
organisation requests project management
permissions (and is onboarded on how) to use the
tasking manager, they take responsibility for
their own projects. HOT does not direct or
gatekeep at this point (although it does offer
guidance and advice). It is correct to call all of
these projects tasking manager projects and it is
correct to call some of them HOT projects.<br>
</blockquote>
<div>Taking this literally, with some attempts but
without active experience, if you want to use the
Tasking manager you need permission from HOT. What
me seem not essentially contradicting the OSM
philosophy, as HOT not being the gatekeeper but it
does restrict you to follow their project
management methods, communication channels and
offers guidance as how to do so, in the HOT
approach. Thus, even if HOT doesn't act as the
gatekeeper, it makes them essentially HOT
projects, since there is few or deeply hidden
guidance of following the OSM guidelines. What
seems a great idea or tool at first glance,
appears to be more a camouflaged trap to do
projects the HOT way, supporting the HOT
philosophy deviating from OSM principles.<br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Even if HOT is the gatekeeper, following this
strategy, numerous projects never get completed.
Due to lack of what ? Lack of qualified
validators, people validating the work of their
own limited group, lost interest, PM's have moved
on to the next project. I recently did a test,
mapped some buildings in a HOT project which was
standing there uncompleted for 3 years, mapping
tasks that were acquiring more work. Months later,
no one even looked at it. There is no follow up,
no maintenance, no hand over to the OSM community,
no validation taking place anymore. <br>
</p>
<div>An always returning primary strategy seems
training, training , training. Training is useful,
and has proven it's success when you are able to
train interested contributors who have access to
resources to participate in OSM. Good examples are
f.i. the youthmappers, who have access through
their institutions. It is incorrect to say, that
the only cause of OSM failing in the less
fortunate regions, is due to a lack of resources.
The increase in the rise of e-commerce, online
financial services, has proven that an increasing
number of the population does have access. Yet it
is not reflected in a comparable increase in OSM
contributors. So we somehow fail to tap into this
growing community. The training should be diverse
though, not focused on the use of the Tasking
manager or any editor, but with the same
importance on the OSM wiki, it's purpose, the
mailing lists and changeset comments, how to
connect and communicate with the broader
community. <br>
</div>
<div> Still a large part, mostly in the rural areas
is not at that level, being access or financial
means. To organise training there doesn't make
sense, you can't teach "a pupil how to write when
he doesn't have a paper and pencil". Government
agencies and administration also lacks the same
resources. To find ground and support in these
communities an approach on empowering them first,
like through community centres, hub or schools and
providing them with resources who can be searched
could be a way forward. These hubs could be
maintained and managed by the local chapters,
local private partners. Essentially handing them
over to the community, to OSM affiliated local
communities.<br>
</div>
<p>Finally a word about the scope of humanitarian.
With the ever growing challenges we face, climate
change, pandemics, the whole word is in a
humanitarian crisis. Good for HOT, as a
humanitarian organisation the world mapping
ecosystem has become a potential candidate. Making
it an alternative to OSM. Please don't, stick to
the core, acute crisis's where immediate
intervention, remote with local support is
required. Don't become a competitor, become a
supporter. Focus on establishing sustainable local
OSM communties, hand over and leave it to them.
Support establishing local chapters, but then step
away from it and let the local community florish.
Local chapter board or leaders should not be
affiliated with any financiers or specific
interest groups. No Facebook, no MapBox, no Apple,
no Google, no TomTom etc... NO HOT. Give us a
chance, respect and trust that all communities are
able to do so, the passionate ones and leaders
will come forward, whatever background they have
humanitarian, engineering, software developer,
farmer, nurse or pupil... in the right
environment, not dominated by the more privileged,
skilled or educated they will find a platform,
OSM, to be able and do so.<br>
</p>
<p>Greetings,<br>
</p>
<p>Bert Araali<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div>On 01/08/2021 20:48, Geoffrey Kateregga wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Hi everyone, <br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div> Interesting discussion here, seeing that
it grew out of RE: Google Open Buildings usage
request and has turned into a discussion of
HOT projects.<br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div> I think the solution to all this is having
strong local OSM communities who take
ownership of OpenStreetMap in their countries.
Communities who can raise the resources they
need to train their members and coordinate
mapping activities. That is exactly what we
have been doing in Uganda, and for someone to
come out and claim that the local community
here is ruled by HOT is an insult and a lack
of acknowledgment of all the good work we have
done over the years by the members of the OSM
community in Uganda. <br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div> The HOT Tasking manager is a tool, which
many organizations including local OSM
communities in Africa are using to coordinate
their mapping. Not all the projects on the HOT
Tasking Manager are set up and managed by HOT.
It is just a tool that different communities
make use of to coordinate their mapping.<br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div> Many of the individuals mapping using the
HOT Tasking Manager are actually locals in
those countries. In Uganda, the local OSM
community here has been mapping Uganda's new
cities, and all the border towns across the
country using the HOT Tasking Manager, in a
coordinated way where projects are mapped and
validated to clean up the data. <br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div> One last point I want to make is that you
will not see many responses here, from African
mappers, simply because not many of them are
on the membership mailing list, but also
because they prefer to use different channels
to communicate including Telegram, WhatsApp,
and Facebook groups, maybe its worth seeking
their point of view on this topic on those
channels as well.<br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div> Kind regards,<br>
</div>
<div> Geoffrey<br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div> Member of the OSM Community in Uganda.<br>
</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>_______________________________________________<br>
</div>
<div> osmf-talk mailing list<br>
</div>
<div> <a rel="noopener noreferrer"
href="mailto:osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org</a><br>
</div>
<div> <a rel="noopener noreferrer"
href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk</a><br>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
</div>
_______________________________________________<br>
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moz-do-not-send="true">osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org</a><br>
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rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk</a><br>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
osmf-talk mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org">osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org</a>
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<p style="font-family: Arial"><i>Allan Mustard<br>
Chairperson, Board of Directors<br>
OpenStreetMap Foundation<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.openstreetmap.org">www.openstreetmap.org</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.osmfoundation.org">www.osmfoundation.org</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:allan.mustard@osmfoundation.org">allan.mustard@osmfoundation.org</a><br>
<br>
St. John’s Innovation Centre<br>
Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WS<br>
United Kingdom<br>
<br>
A company limited by guarantee, registered in England and
Wales.<br>
Registration Number 05912761.<br>
</i></p>
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