[Osmf-talk] Comments on Microgrant Implementation (WAS: Microgrant Implementation Voted on by the Board without Community Consultation?)

[Joost Schouppe]

Hi Michael,

I went through your 16 issues, and there is a lot of really useable stuff
in there. Thank you, this will definitely help improve the project. This is
going to be hard to process with the Board though. I'm thinking I can split
it up into non-controversial changes, things where I can suggest a possible
solution but explicitly ask if that's good, and some stuff that will need
real discussion. Most of the documents we used for this are from before my
time, and I can imagine we'll be opening some old wounds (I hope that'll
prove to be an overstatement).

There's only one question I have at this time: is your section "Limit of
Applications per Applicant" a suggestion? Currently I thought the text
clearly only limits thenumber of grants, not applications themselves. Would
you suggest to add such an extra limit as a hard rule?

Joost

On Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 11:08 PM Michael Reichert <osm-ml at michreichert.de>
wrote:

> Hi Joost, dear other board members,
>
> Am 12/10/2019 um 21.23 schrieb Joost Schouppe:> Thanks for the input you
> already gave, and looking forward to your more
> > detailed feedback. We would like to welcome the rest of the community to
> do
> > the same. I have some minor edits to the ODT file you linked, so as to
> make
> > it more readible for people who weren't following the Board discussion
> > before.
>
> The message might look a bit picky but it should cover almost anything
> relevant I can say about the draft.
>
> First of all, the parts of the document which partially contradict
> themselves:
>
> Section "Examples of good ideas":
> > Design work (e.g. leaflets, stock image creation) & updating such
> > digital files.
>
> On the other hand, "Eligibility criteria" says:
> > Funds for offline activities are typically for direct expenses and not
> > used to pay for people’s time. Funds can be used to pay for people’s
> > time in certain cases, for example on software projects and tools
> > development.
>
> Does this mean that the work of designing leaflets or creating stock
> images cannot be funded but printing of leaflets can? IMHO, the term
> "design work" means the work to design. Or do we have different
> interpretations of it? What did you want to express?
>
> I am a bit confused what can be founded with projects matching this
> category:
> > Funding for a school or university to integrate mapping in their
> > curriculum, run projects mapping their local area and working with
> > local stakeholders to use their data.
>
> Do you have examples from the past for that and, what could these
> project ask to be funded if the microgrant programme had existed back
> then? What is not paying someone for their work but still covered by the
> microgrants programme? Hosting an event? Would travelling be an
> acceptable thing to fund? But it is mentioned in the list of things
> unlikely to be accepted? It is a bit confusing.
>
> The draft contains an unnecessary duplication between "Eligibility
> criteria" (page 3) and
>
> In addition, I have more feedback:
>
> *Goals*
> The document itself gives a good framework regarding desired and
> undesired projects. It describes the requirements. This is great and a
> big step forward compared to the last documents I saw regarding the
> microgrants programme. However, I do not find anything how applications
> will be rated or ranked. The draft does not provide any criteria.
>
> Do you expect the committee to decide on that prior to the launch of the
> programme?
>
> Possible rating criteria could be:
> - Sustainability (from OSM point of view): Will the spent money have any
>   effect in two or three years as well?
> - What problem does the proposed project solve?
> - How urgent is the problem?
> - Do other projects reach more with the same or a lower amount of money?
>
> They could guide a discussion on the OSMF-Talk mailing list (more about
> discussions below).
>
> The question of goals and rating criteria should be answered before the
> programme is finally agreed on. The board knows what it would like to
> achieve with the money, doesn't it?
>
>
> *Additional Funding by Others*
> I miss a rule that funding by third parties and in the past needs to be
> mentioned in the application. Parallel funding by multiple donors should
> not be accepted. Otherwise we will end up funding large projects
> partially. Is that the intention of the board?
>
> *Hosting*
> "One-off consts related to hosting" are given as a good example but
> "Recurring hosting, rent and other costs" are "unlikely to be
> accecpted". Costs to host servers are about half of all projects
> applying for a FOSSGIS grant and make up two thirds of the costs of
> FOSSGIS microgrant programme. I understand that you do not want ongoing
> costs for a first microgrant programme pilot because it can come with a
> moral obligation to fund the project in its second year.
>
> At FOSSGIS, we usually fund projects which have a community behind them
> and most projects funded by us are not new. They have been funded from
> peoples' or companies' own budget before (typically EUR 40 to 100 per
> month).
>
> *Funding Merchandise and Giveways*
> "Merchandise (swag) to recognize exceptional volunteer contributions, or
> low-cost swag" is a good example but "Merchandise giveaways for all
> participants in an event or for general outreach, including t-shirts" is
> a bad example. I agree with the bad example but I wonder where to draw
> the border.
>
> *Server Hardware*
> "Server hardware" is given as a bad example. At FOSSGIS, such examples
> are unlikely to be accepted except the hardware will be owned by FOSSGIS
> and be under the control of FOSSGIS. Instead we advise people to rent a
> sever at Hetzner and let us pay the bill.
>
> *Committee, Transparency and Mailing Lists Discussions*
> I have mixed opinions regarding the committee. On the one hand, I prefer
> these people be elected by the members of the Foundation directly. On
> the other hand, the result of that election will not be as diverse as
> some would like the committee to be because the result of an election
> using STV will represent the structure of the working group. On the one
> hand, it could be a bit too much bureaucracy to elect the committee for
> a first test for a microgrant programme, on the other hand, four of
> seven board members can carry through "their committee" in a voting of
> the board members against the minority (the other three officers).
>
> I myself do not oppose the current setup as long as the whole process is
> as much transparent as possible. We are not going to fund travel because
> applicants have a too low income to pay it themselves. Very sensitive
> data by applicants will likely not be handled in the process and makes
> it easy to share the applications as widely/publicly as possible.
> Therefore, I strongly recommend to follow the "public by default"
> principle.
>
> EUR 50,000 is a lot of money and the committee has despite the veto
> right of the board a lot of power. This power should be accompanied by
> transparency. Sharing the applications with the OSMF-Talk list as a
> mandatory step of the application and discussing it there is excellent.
>
> However, it will lead to a peak in messages sent over the list because
> likely most applications will arrive shortly before the deadline. At
> FOSSGIS, people have to publish their application at our public wiki
> (https://www.fossgis.de/wiki) and email the board. After that the board
> starts the discussion (limited to two weeks) at the mailing list of the
> members. Members can ask questions to the applicant and do this very
> often (they take off the work to review the proposals in detail). The
> list is not public but messages are summarised on the wiki. The final
> decision is up to the board. They discuss it in their public meeting. In
> difference to OSMF, our microgrant programme has now deadline. You can
> apply at any time and we table the final decision at one of the next two
> monthly board meetings.
>
> I suggest to let someone (be it the committee or the board) organise the
> discussion on the mailing list (announcing start and end) and not to
> discuss all applications in parallel (two is fine, three my preferred
> limit). If we receive a large number of applications, discarding
> obviously unsuitable applications before they are discussed might be a
> good idea. However, the application itself should be public to ensure
> checks and balances. Whether to preselect or not should be decided by
> the committee.
>
> Following the public by default principle, the meetings of the committee
> should be open to the public using Mumble (same as board meetings are).
>
> *Who Will Manage the Applications?*
> In your draft, applications should be sent to
> secretary at osmfoundation.org. If you want to give real power and
> responsibility to the committee (you can still veto) and reduce the
> workload of the board, using the committee also to organise the whole
> application might be advisable. It can be a position for new people to
> get into volunteering for OSMF operations. ;-)
>
> *Limit of Applications per Applicant*
> The draft writes:
> > Any individual, group, or organization is allowed a maximum of three
> > open grants at any one time.
>
> Does this refer to applications or grants?
>
> *Discussion requirement in advance*
> A comment in the document (page 4) says:
> > Project must have been shared and discussed before the grant
> > submission start > suggesting to drop this, as this is hard to prove.
>
> Does discussion means that the idea of the project to be funded or the
> idea to apply was discussed in a suitable (usually local) communication
> channel? This is a provable. Even if people use communication channels
> which do not offer a proper archive, providing screen shots are
> possible. You could replace this by a requirement to consult the local
> community at least as described by the Organised Editing Guidelines if
> the project has any relation to the local community.
>
> *Other reasonable source
> Eligibility criteria:
> > You must exhaust all other reasonable sources of grant money before
> > applying to this program, including but not limited to:
> > - Your local OSM Chapter or organization.
> > - Other local institutions or organizations known for supporting open
> >   initiatives.
> > - Your employer.
>
> On the one hand, asking people to ask for funding elsewhere is good
> idea. On the other hand, the proposed requirements have some issues
> (they can be ignored but one should be aware of them):
>
> - We might wish to see some proof that the employer was asked. But
>   asking your employer if the employer and your job has nothing to do
>   with OSM is strange, isn't it? I know that the sentence contains the
>   term "reasonable" but it will be easily overlooked.
>
> - Do we really want to force that? Are you aware that this communication
>   can be seen as sensitive and employees are likely bound not to share
>   internal communication with people outside the company?
>
> - If someone gets funding by their employer, they are bound to it and
>   have fewer freedom than someone funded by OSMF. The project becomes a
>   pet of the company. Should the employment of an applicant influence
>   the chances and projects that much?
>
> - The requirement to ask the employer makes only sense if it a single
>   person applies for a grant, not a group.
>
> - Local chapters likely have more knowledge about the details around
>   an application. That's why I would add the requirement that the
>   applicatant has to share the reasons with the public why the
>   application was rejected.
>
> I would remove the item "Your employer" and add a rule somewhere in the
> document that the requests to other sources of funding have to revealed
> and, if declined, their reasons.
>
> *Licences*
> > That is, an event attendance should be free of charge, software must
> > be open-sourced, media must be freely downloadable and published under
> > open licenses.
>
> Could you please append the following between "open licenses" and the
> trailing dot?
> > permitting modification and re-use including commercial use
>
> CC-BY-NC-* (and CC-BY-ND-*) are no free licences. NC not that much
> different to "all rights reserved" under German law.
>
> *Personal benefit*
> > Personal benefit should be small compared to benefit of outcome.
>
> Good, but the following would be better:
>
> > Personal benefit should be small compared to benefit of outcome. The
> > application should describe potential personal benefit.
>
> If a local community gets to know each other better, the applicant(s)
> have a small personal benefit and that would be good. But we do not want
> to fund someone's study, do we?
>
> *Language*
> The draft (page 4):
> > There is no language criterium, but applications need to be translated
> > to English before the application deadline.
>
> I appreciate this very much.
>
> I wonder which of these aspects were mentioned by other board memebers.
> Unfortunately, there are no minutes of the board meeting in Brussels I
> could have taken a look into before writing this long email.
>
> Best regards
>
> Michael
>
>
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