[Osmf-talk] Draft resolution on membership prerequisites

[Steve Friedl]

You raise thoughtful points, thank you.

 

*	How could MWG, made of volunteers, have the time to investigate 1000s of people's involvement in OSM?

 

The vast, vast majority of people would meet the 42-mapping day requirement automatically via database queries. The rest require judgement calls and work, which I (on the MWG) do not look forward to. 

 

*	Huge companies will already have over 1000 employees, and they can make it a requirement of the job

 

Of course, but efforts at election subversion at that scale would surely become public, creating a PR issue. That might matter to some, but surely not all, large companies.

 

*	Don't mess with membership (unless the sole purpose of membership in OSMF is to vote for the Board, in which case change the communication around membership to make this clear).  

 

I’m not sure what other privileges are afforded to members *other than* voting for (and standing for) the Board; I not even sure one needs to be an OSMF member to be on a working group. I am probably uninformed about this.

 

I really do take to heart the general unwelcoming vibe this whole things puts out, and that’s not to be dismissed lightly.

 

But I don’t believe we ought to ignore the concern about takeover, OSM is an asset worth far more than what it was during the Global Logic incident, and I’d hate us to get caught flat-footed.

 

Really: those with ideas on how to solve this problem should really speak up.  Might not be a bad idea for the Board to maybe consult some corporate-structure legal advice. Kathleen, know any good lawyers? 😊

 

Steve 

 

 

 

From: Kathleen Lu <kathleenlu09 at gmail.com> 
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 12:36 PM
To: Steve Friedl <steve at unixwiz.net>
Cc: Imre Samu <pella.samu at gmail.com>; Tobias Knerr <osm at tobias-knerr.de>; OSMF Talk <osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>
Subject: Re: [Osmf-talk] Draft resolution on membership prerequisites

 

 

And my experience is that most people who get involved in Foundation business didn’t start out that way, but started out doing actual regular mapping: getting 42 lifetime days of mapping in your past seems like a relatively low bar. 

 

But MegaCorp getting 1000 employees (who don’t care about OSM one way or the other) to do this would be a much bigger challenge.

 

 

These assumptions do not make sense to me. 

 

For a huge corporation, getting 1000 employees to make one edit a day for two months should be trivial. Huge companies will already have over 1000 employees, and they can make it a requirement of the job. While I understand the exploration of anti-takeover measures, I do not think going down the route of setting a minimum participation amount actually makes any progress towards this goal. The thing that corporations have a systematic advantage over individuals is *resources*. Requiring *more* resources to participate would *advantage* corporations over individuals (and advantage larger corporations over smaller businesses). 

 

On the flip side, suppose someone maps for a couple of hours every other weekend. They would be required to map for nearly two years before they can become a member. As for my own stats, if I chair 12 LWG meetings a year instead of editing the map, how would you measure that? Do I get 12 days of credit (3+ years to meet the 42 day threshold), or do the days I make the agenda count too? How would MWG know which days I made the agenda? OSM has no centralized stats as to who attends meetings or works on planning, coding, etc. How could MWG, made of volunteers, have the time to investigate 1000s of people's involvement in OSM?

 

Even if the requirement is not difficult to meet, it *sounds* difficult to meet for someone new to OSM. Simply requiring someone to explain themselves to a bunch of strangers discourages participation, and has a disproportionate effect on those with less confidence in the process (gender minorities, due to socialization and past experience with gating; non-native English speakers, due to less confidence in their communication skills; newer participants unfamiliar with MWG, etc) resulting in reduced diversity.

 

If OSMF only wants dedicated hobbyists to be able to vote for the OSMF Board, then state that as a goal and limit Board voting to a select group. Don't mess with membership (unless the sole purpose of membership in OSMF is to vote for the Board, in which case change the communication around membership to make this clear).  

 

Regards,

Kathleen

 

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