[Osmf-talk] Elections: Avoid Mandate Creep

[Serge Wroclawski]

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