[Strategic] getting started

[Emilie Laffray]

On 1 June 2010 09:29, Mikel Maron <mikel_maron at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> Yup, if everything could be fixed with money, then OSM would be a
> commercial company, not a volunteer project.
>
>
Indeed.


> Partially, I don't think the Foundation has a good comprehensive picture of
> all needs, along with an evaluation of
> how much the community can provide, and what would need funding.
>
> For instance, at what point does the sysadmin burden become too much for a
> volunteer? Never? Next year?
>
> Looking at the usability question, is a redesign something which ultimately
> needs to be pushed by hiring someone?
> Or is it a matter of organizing the process correctly? And if it's just
> about the process, then who will take charge of
> that?
>
>
I agree with you here. There is a clear view on what we need in terms of
hardware but it is not clear what we need in terms of human resources for
tasks like sysadmin and/or programmers potentially. I really appreciate that
Grant and Tom are always around to help on the IRC channel, but I think we
should start asking them if the load is fine with them or not, and then
react accordingly.
I am not for employing someone full time yet until we know what processes we
will be following, else we will be wasting money. In terms of redesigning, I
think we will also need to think about how to proceed whether we are
employing someone or not. In the end, it is going to be a highly political
decision as the community will want to give feedback. It is clear that any
decisions will not make many people happy, but that's life.
When we have a clear idea of what we want, we can then proceed to hire
someone to do the redesign or to let the community do it.



> Very good question. I can see advantages to both approaches, or a hybrid.
>
> For instance, OSI had offered to fund a re-granting scheme, where OSMF
> would receive applications for small grants to support use of OSM in
> cooperation
> with civil society organizations. This would not necessarily involve Local
> Chapters,
> but could. Would OSMF be able to politically take on such a role?
>

Regarding local chapters, I think we have to be careful. I will talk with
the French contributor hat right now. We are currently setting up a French
association mostly because we are starting to be offered donations and
hardware for OSM France. It likely means that in the near future, France
will have an association with money. We decided not to apply as a local
chapter for the time being because we have no clear view on what is a local
chapter. One of the point that was the most contentious in the previous
proposal was the flow of money. The French association wants to be able to
raise their own money, so we can set up local projects. In addition, many of
the potential donators will NOT give to the foundation as it is a foreign
entity, due to the nature of the French law.
This is just one example, but I don't think a central fundraising would work
well in many points. In the funding ideas, it is clear that we have to see
how LC will fit into the grand scheme of things and find an acceptable
compromise between the two parties. One of the current topic has been
getting disks for one of the server that was donated to a French association
for OSM so it can be become an european or French tile server. We have to
think how to allow those kind of money transfer between official structures,
unofficial, etc...

Emilie Laffray
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