[Osmf-talk] voting fraud

Darafei "Komяpa" Praliaskouski me at komzpa.net
Thu Jan 31 20:33:34 UTC 2019


As there has been many speculations let me speculate a bit too.

I imagine GL business model as outsourcing company. They need a good
looking team to continue to exist.
To do so, you have to show to the company that pays them money that people
working on the task are not some random people, but qualified ones.

There is no such thing as "certified OSM mapper", so you have to find any
other thing you may put on CV of your employees that will make them look
qualified.
A single training on ArcGIS costs ~$2000* and brings just one line on CV,
plus a framed certificate.

You can also spend similar money on OSMF membership and get another line on
CV, now OSM-related. Closest thing available.

It may happen that a reason for it all is some contract negotiations and
not even be related to votes in any way.

[*]
https://www.esri.com/training/catalog/5b69d19d3aaa8e052d9cc9ab/esri-arcgis-desktop-professional-certification-10.5/


On Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 11:16 PM Steve Friedl <steve at unixwiz.net> wrote:

> > This is one of the biggest riddles for me here - what would someone need
> these 100 votes for so urgently.
>
> This is a riddle for us too, and we have **no evidence** that any board
> member or candidate had any involvement, directly or indirectly, with this
> incident, including knowledge beforehand. I don't even have a nagging
> suspicion pointing in any direction, this is just a mystery.
>
> Mysteries are unsettling.
>
> Global Logic could explain themselves, but they're not doing it to MWG.
>
> Steve
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>
> Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2019 12:06 PM
> To: osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [Osmf-talk] voting fraud
>
> Hi,
>
> I fully agree that this is a serious issue and this is the board opinion
> too. We are acutely aware that there are many companies who could easily
> muster 1000 employees to join the OSMF, and they would then essentially own
> our domain, our trademarks, and most of the project. In the months to come,
> we will have to discuss how to inoculate the project against hostile
> takeovers. There are many possible approaches to this.
>
> Independent of that forward-looking work we'll also have to decide what
> should happen to the 100 memberships in question.
>
> It would also be interesting to get to the bottom of this issue - i.e.
> find out exactly who did what when and what they had in mind.
>
> On 1/31/19 18:17, Rihards wrote:
> > The suspicions listed below are not mine - all of the information is
> > already floating around in various discussion channels/forums. Not
> > dispersing those suspicions causes harm for the potentially involved
> > individuals and OSM community in general.
>
> I'm not sure that dispersing them helps.
>
> > * GlobalLogic (GL) employees have clashed with individual mappers, DWG
> > and other OSM entities regarding their map changes (when
> > Grab-contracted or otherwise).
>
> This is undoubtedly true and can be verified e.g. by some publicly
> available block messages and diary entries.
>
> > * GL employees have worked with HOT and have similarly relaxed
> > attitude towards the quality of map data.
>
> Some GL managers mention participation in HOT projects in their LinkedIn
> profiles, but I don't have reliable information on any cooperation between
> HOT and GL.
>
> > * Organised editing policy has been disliked by corporate-related
> > mappers and board members.
>
> This is undoubtedly true and can be seen from the initial survey and from
> board meeting minutes.
>
> > * GL is unlikely to waste 1500+ GBP (2000 USD; just the membership
> > fees) without certain confidence that this expense will pay back.
>
> This amount of money is negligible for an organisation that has 12,000
> employees.
>
> > * It is unlikely that none of the board members or candidates had not
> > the slightest clue this was happening.
>
> Let me put it this way: If *I* was good friends with someone in a company
> and they told me they plan to sign up 100 members on the last day of the
> voting deadline, I would tell them not to do it because it is obvious that
> it will cause an outcry. None of my colleagues on the board are stupid;
> they would very likely have issued the same warning.
> Therefore I do not suspect that any board member knew anything about this.
>
> > * It is likely that some had a role in organising this.
>
> A board member, certainly not. One would have to be desperate to take such
> a risk. Now if the 2018 board candidates had been a bunch of total
> extremists, to a degree where one would think "OMG if this person gets
> elected then everything goes down the drain", then maybe, just maybe,
> someone who cares too much could be tempted to participate in manipulation.
> But the 2018 field of candidates did not have anyone to strike fear into
> the heart of existing board members.
>
> This is one of the biggest riddles for me here - what would someone need
> these 100 votes for so urgently.
>
> > * Various dismissals (contrasting GL employee influx with population
> > of
> > India) and delays regarding the MWG report make all the suspicions
> > more valid.
>
> Oh dear, now I have made the suspicions even more valid :)
>
> > It might be same as with the child-molesting priests. Lack of strong
> > denouncement shifts the public perception against the accused.
>
> Yeah let's discuss the child-molesting priests another time, and in
> another forum, shall we?
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
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-- 
Darafei Praliaskouski
Support me: http://patreon.com/komzpa
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