[Osmf-talk] OSMF Strategic Planning 2023 - call for participation

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 09.05.23 16:15, Mike Thompson wrote:
> 2) What can be done to increase awareness of OSM among the general 
> public, especially those that use an OSM based app?

Many OSM-using corporations with a big audience take a very cavalier 
attitude towards their attribution requirements.

Some of them are even corporate members of the OSMF, and when reminded 
they will smile at us and say "we hear you but we believe that what 
we're doing is sufficient, legally".

Perhaps the connection that you explained - "OSM awareness leads to more 
mappers and more funding, therefore essential to OSMF" - could be made 
clearer to them. If they want OSM to thrive then they must give us our 
well-earned share of end-user attention. And if they don't, well, then 
even if we can't force them to do the right thing, at least we should 
stop calling them "partners", "sponsors", or "friends" and kick them out.

I wonder if those attribution-skirting companies are the same who, 
according tho the strategy document we're discussing, "regularly 
encounter overt hostility from certain members of the OSM community", 
and if yes, I wonder why that might be!

> 4) Develop and run an "add my business" website that would allow a 
> business owner to add their business to OSM by simply filling out a form 
> and clicking once on a map.  These submissions should be reviewed by an 
> OSM volunteer before actually being added to the map.

Some of these already exist. One is called "onosm.org" 
https://www.onosm.org/ and attracts a huge amount of SEO spam (i.e. not 
useful facts about a company but marketing copy about how they are the 
biggest, cheapest, oldest and best in the field etc.). This adds notes 
to OSM and relies on mappers to translate them into proper objects. 
Another is https://osmybiz.osm.ch/ which can directly create objects if 
you register with OSM first.

Bye
Frederik

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