[Osmf-talk] Elections: Avoid Mandate Creep
Serge Wroclawski
serge at wroclawski.org
Sat Nov 12 15:35:55 UTC 2011
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 03:23:43PM +0100, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 11/12/2011 01:52 PM, Serge Wroclawski wrote:
>> Do you believe your views have greater importance than other voters?
>
> The point is that I would like to *discuss* my views with the other
> voters, most of whom I assume are on this list. I think democracy
> benefits from options being publicly discussed among the elctorate,
> rather than everyone silently and secretly posting their vote.
That's fair.
Here's my response:
I believe that OSM as a project is most successful when its being used
and contributed by the largest number of people.
That is, it's not enough to just have highly accurate data, it must also
have a large, active community that created it and continues to support
it.
In addition, I believe OSM faces directed competition to it by several
types of organizations, including and especially commercial entities who
wish to use our "crowdsource model" to create proprietary datasets.
The response needs to come from the community, but can and should be
supported by the Foundation.
In my view, the Foundation and its board are not merely "keepers" of the
data, but community leaders chosen by the community to aid the project
in ways they believe will benefit the project.
I agree with the sentiment that the community should be grass roots, but
sometimes things need to be done that are aren't fun. I think we're in
agreement that some functions aren't controversial to pay for, like
bookkeeping.
I think there's value in OSMF exploring expanding the project's
capabilities and that could mean equipment, funding software
development, targeted outreach, etc.
I agree there's a healthy debate to have about OSMF spending and
fundraising. I know I don't agree with all the spending OSMF made last
year.
So instead of saying "OSMF should do as little as possible", we should
explore exactly what we want OSMF doing.
- Serge
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