[Osmf-talk] false Microsoft "big dollars" rumour

[Frederik Ramm]

Dear OSMF board (Cc'ed to osmf-talk and CWG),

    may I suggest that board/CWG issue a statement saying that

"OSMF has not received any donations or support, monetary or otherwise, 
from Microsoft" (adorned with language that says of course the community 
is thankful for their imagery and that of course were they offer money 
we'd gladly take it etc etc)

As you probably have noticed, the issue is slowly getting out of hand in 
the press,

It started with 
http://www.pcworld.com/article/252649/microsofts_secret_weapon_against_google_maps_open_source.html 
("Microsoft is lending big support and big dollars to the open source 
map project OpenStreetMap"), which is regurgitated on 
http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/27/2906212/microsoft-openstreetmap-google-maps-competitor 
among others.

Board member Richard Fairhurst has already said on the talk list that 
"I'm not aware of any announcement being made or (say) any formal 
contact this year between Microsoft and OSMF.", but I think more is 
required.

We owe it to those who *really* give use money to intervene when the 
press starts going wild about alleged "big dollars" from Microsoft which 
have no basis in reality.

What's more, community members start asking questions and feel 
under-informed by OSMF ("why don't they say anything about the big 
money?") when in fact there's nothing to report. Mikel already had to 
close a thread on talk which was triggered by this misinformation.

Bye
Frederik

(In case I am wrong in assuming that no money has flown or been 
promised, then of course we owe it to Microsoft to publicly write 
something about the donation.)

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"