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

[Sam Larsen]

Hi,

As an employee of Big Croporate #2 i spend a lot of my time trying to get people to see the benefit of communicating with each other and unlocking information.  I struggle with information gatekeepers, confusion, duplicated effort and all the other things that come out of restricted information flows.  OSM for me is a release from the corporate information struggle.  It's a place where we can stop arguing about data/information secrecy and just get it all out there for all to see.  

I would like to see major donor information put on a page on the OSMF wiki and if people have issues about us being overly influenced by big donors, then we can add a large prominent link to a list of all community donors on the OSM wiki and we can show the proportion of donations which have come from the 'big corps' and 'the rest'.  The stats will speak for themselves.
Clear guidelines about publishing of donations over a certain amount would help, and if donors have a problem with that - we'll still survive as a project.  I think we need to be thankful to all who have contributed to OSM 
reguardless of their motivations, as long as they are not attempting to 
damage the project we have gained because of them.

The page doesn't have to be limited to financial donations, if the contributions of UCL for example were monetised they would probably move high up that list.

Sam