[HOT] OSM Foundation member fees changing

Philippe Verdy verdyp at gmail.com
Sat Apr 4 00:10:33 UTC 2020


For those that are unemployed, paying 15 pounds once is much money,
including in "rich" countries because of higher general prices for
life with the low incomes (ven with social benefits). Also lot of
people can't pay online with their debit card (and they have
difficulties to spare that money without having it seized for some
reasons, or because they would have their benefits reduced if they
keep that money unused in their bank account). Those people have only
cash (bills/coins or electronic cash) for very short periods and can
only pay small amounts (the rest of the time they have no money at
all, everything is taken for essential life support).

One solution would be to pay in fractioned way, by micropayments, e.g.
by SMS fees (one or two SMS every month at ~0.75€ each, and once you
reach 20 SMS, you've paid the yearly bill; and each SMS before that
will count for a ratio of period, so if you can pay only 10 SMS since
the first one in the 1-year period, you get rights for 6 months since
that first paid SMS). They would be able to choose when to pay these
micropayments

Micropayments would satisfy those that have the most time to
contribute and work the most (they give in fact what is most
precious), but can't decide because they have no right and can't pay
the membership right.

However micropayments may cause significant admin costs for OSM or
HOT; I wonder if there are ways to manage micropayment via efficient
online services (that would manage the transactions and identity of
payers), something that would be also useful for general life in
developing countries (may be some microbank organisation?), with also
a strict respect of privacy.

Le ven. 3 avr. 2020 à 23:05, Pete Masters via HOT
<hot at openstreetmap.org> a écrit :
>
> Hi all, don't know if you have seen but the OpenStreetMap Foundation have been discussing membership fees. Some interesting new proposals have been voted on recently...
>
> https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/MWG_2020-01-19#implementation_of_new_Fee_waiver_for_mappers.2Fcontributors
>
> This is important because the OSMF members vote for the board and the board are influential in defining / guiding the future of OpenStreetMap, which we all know and love.
>
> This is different to HOT membership as to be a member for OSMF you had to pay £15 (sterling) or apply for an exemption on an individual basis (whereas for HOT, you need to be nominated). This fee was regardless of whether £15 was a lot of money or not much money wherever you were from. The new rules look to reward contribution to the OSM project, not just whether you can spare the cash.
>
> The OSMF membership working group are looking for feedback on the proposals. You can either email them directly at mwg at openstreetmap.org or post to the OSMF talk list [1].
>
> I think the proposals are good and worth engaging with...
>
> Hope you are all safe and well in these crazy times!
>
> Pete
>
> [1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
>
>
>
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