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

[Frederik Ramm]

Harry,

On 04/20/2012 06:26 AM, Harry Wood wrote:
> I have to say I was surprised that Frederik raised this issue and
> various others discussed it, yet nobody got around to actually
> posting a comment on the original pcworld article mentioned.

Quite frankly, I do not trust the OSMF board to be forthcoming enough 
with such information. While I was sure that OSMF had never *announced* 
anything about "big dollars from Microsoft", it would have been entirely 
possible that Microsoft had actually told OSMF board already that they 
wanted to give us "big dollars" and OSMF board just hadn't got around to 
telling OSMF members for some reason or other.

As far as I know the ESRI donation was known to OSMF board weeks before 
they said anything about it publicly (and then it took some nagging to 
hear what kind of donation it was).

It would have been entirely possible that I, as a mere OSMF member not 
partial to the important stuff that gets discussed on OSMF board, would 
have made an idiot of myself by "dispelling" the rumour only to be told 
a week later that there had indeed been a major donation but OSMF board 
hadn't seen fit to inform us just yet.

> We do
> rely on the community to do the time consuming work of correcting
> journalists e.g. by posting comments at least. I posted on here in
> the end, but that came over a week after the article appeared:
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/252649/microsofts_secret_weapon_against_google_maps_open_source.html
> I'd say everyone please go forth and post correcting comments like
> this when journalists are wrong, but keep it positive!

I think it is important that we can rely on OSM project members to do 
that work (not least because it is going to require fluency in a lot of 
languages and many many eyeballs to spot what is written).

However, this requires that OSMF board/working groups/anyone with inside 
knowledge make a commitment to openness vis-a-vis the community, and 
create an environment in which everyone in the project can be sure that 
no information is unduly held back. I can see that this is not always 
easy; our project is so big that anything you tell all project members 
you might as well tell the whole world, and some matters may indeed 
require confidentiality. But this has the unfortunate effect that even 
as an OSMF member I am on the other end of a "managed communications 
channel" from OSMF board and that *most* things are treated 
confidential, especially things that have to do with household names. 
Big Corp #1 gives us a load of money, Big Corp #2 has emailed that they 
intend to switch2osm, Big Corp #3 has been sent a nastygram for license 
violation - I might be wrong (and would love to be) but I don't feel 
that board would necessarily inform me in a timely fashion about such 
issues.

Which makes me, and others in the same position, less useful when 
speaking to the press, writing comments an the like.

Bye
Frederik

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