[Osmf-talk] Modus operandi of the board

Simon Poole simon at poole.ch
Tue Oct 21 09:42:44 UTC 2014


Hi Sarah

First things first: the board has in the time I've been involved
operated legally, if not squeaky clean. There were historic practices
that were at odds with our by-laws, however they were rectified with the
adoption of the current articles at last years GM.

I do share a number of Frederiks sentiments in that a lot of the work in
the board is rather frustrating and even simple things take a tremendous
amount of time, leading to a number of initiatives simply being dropped,
for example as Frederik mentions a long overdue policy on trademarks.

As a consequence I've concentrated on getting a few baby steps done,
the new AoAs, the local chapter agreement (we have three applications
which are being processed now, after more than seven years of mucking
around) and a proposal for reducing the membership fees for members that
can't afford them for the upcoming GM in Argentina. Note that I have
been accused of railroading some of these to get them done at last,
mighty slow railroad I have to say.

As to internal and external transparency: we've made some progress, as
Frederik mentions after all excuses had been removed by the AoA change
last year we do now have access to the list of members. On the other
hand trivialities are still missing, for example prompt publication of
our financial results as soon as they have been finalised. I don't know
how many readers realize, but our accounts are a matter of public record
and were duly filed, as always, in May of this year (for 2012-2013),
they are simply just not available on our website.

In the grand scheme of things naturally the OSMF has an extremely small
budget, and I can sympathize a bit with the position of not making a big
fuss about reporting and so on. On the other hand if we want to spend
and manage more funds, which given growth is going to happen sooner or
later, we need to show that we are actually capable of doing so in a
transparent and trustworthy manner.

Simon



Am 21.10.2014 10:25, schrieb Sarah Hoffmann:
> Dear OSMF board,
> 
> while checking the candidate list for the upcoming board elections, I came
> across Frederik's maifesto here:
> 
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Frederik_Ramm/2014_OSMF_Board_Elections_Manifesto
> 
> This sheds some rather bad light on how the board operates, indicating that
> some of the practises border on the illigal. I understand that this is the
> individual opinion of a single board member but I believe it is important
> that such accusations are discussed because I don't see how the board can
> operate efficiently otherwise. It is even more important in the light of
> the upcoming elections. Reading this manifesto indicates that there is
> little point in standing for election as there is nothing but frustration
> to achieve in the board.
> 
> Therefore, I would appreciate if all the individual board members could
> shortly address the points raised by Frederik. Do you agree with his
> accounts and why? Why do you think it would be benificial to stand for
> elections to the board?
> 
> In addition, I'd like the responsible board members to explain why it
> is common practice to withhold financial and member information from
> other board members.
> 
> Again, I'm not interested in an official board statement but in the 
> individual opinions of the people a potential new board member would
> have to work with.
> 
> Looking forward to your answers.
> 
> Sarah
> 
> _______________________________________________
> osmf-talk mailing list
> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
> 

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