[Osmf-talk] Running

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Thu Oct 23 16:17:23 UTC 2014


Hi,

On 10/23/2014 04:57 PM, steve at asklater.com wrote:
> If elected I'll try my best to achieve what I outlined previously
> here; 
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2014-October/071135.html

Frankly,
> 
your eminent goal sounds a lot like:

"Let's collect one lat/lon pair for every address in the world."

That's a lot less than OSM, and something that can probably be achieved
better with different technologies, different people, different concepts.

It's not even a geographic database with objects in topological
relations, it's essentially a giant CSV file that you're after.

An all for what? That we can be the world leader in supplying giant CSV
files with lat/lons pinned against addresses, so that a random iPhone
app can tell you how far away the nearest branch of a random chain store is.

Frankly I can't think of a more boring use case than addressing. Yes we
do addressing *too* but telling people that addressing should be made a
*priority* would mean that you've very thoroughly forgotten what
motivates this vibrant, grassroots community.

You might belittle it as "having fun with swings and slides", but your
alternative is becoming a project of corporate drones who do big
businesses' bidding.

Mappers are first an foremost motivated by the use that they themselves
see in OSM. For the human mapper, geocoding comes long, long after
drawing good maps and having good bicycle routing and helping disaster
victims.

OpenStreetMap is not a business, and doesn't have to cater for business
interests. Like many before you, you're making the "we can only survive
if we're adopted by businesses big time, and we can only be adopted big
time if we do <X>" argument. For some, <X> is "use different license",
for you it is "prioritize addressing".

I don't believe you're right, and I think you are doing the project a
disservice if you try to reduce it to addressing (with everything else
being "having fun with swings and slides").

> I left a few years ago because I thought I was part of the problem
> and was holding things back. It doesn't look like that was entirely
> the case. Since approximately then I've got married and had kids and
> see things in a different light.

Are you saying that you see things in a different light and you have
ideas about how to serve with your peers on the board of directors in a
constructive way, or are you saying that you now think you've done
everything right and you want to continue where you left off?

> I'll also give transparent reports of what's happening at every board meeting.

Does that mean you'd like to apply for the role of "secretary", writing
and publishing the minutes, or does that mean you're in favour of
letting all board members report on board meetings equally?

I remember you, more than once, insisting that certain matters on the
board were discussed exclusively on the telephone and not by email or
even minuted, because otherwise they would be "discoverable" in
hypothetical future legal proceedings. I also, more than once, heard you
speak in riddles where you would only hint at someone having approached
you about something, without telling us exactly who it was and exactly
what they said. In fact I attributed some of the anti-transparency
antics that I encountered with some longer serving board members to
having learnt these habits from you.

Do you see these things in a different light now too, or if not, would
you care to describe in more detail where the limits of transparency are
for you?

Bye
Frederik

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




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