[Strategic] getting started

[Richard Fairhurst]

Mikel Maron wrote:

> I see a pattern emerging. The need isn't for OSMF to do the work itself,
> but organize properly for volunteers to do the work.

That's fair, I think.

Ultimately it comes back to OSMF's core purpose: "supporting but not  
controlling the project".

An example.

The community has not yet formed a clear view as to what the front  
page should look like. I'm sure it will in time; perhaps influenced by  
occasional proofs-of-concept posted by motivated people to which the  
community might respond "wow!" or "ugh". So for OSMF to employ a  
design consultancy to redesign the front page would be premature: the  
community consensus isn't there yet.

But right now, a bunch of us are working on Potlatch 2 which is both a  
useful project per se and has community buy-in. It has some great code  
and UI design, but the icons are a bit, um, uneven; and we don't  
appear to have a great icon designer anywhere. So a worthwhile use of  
OSMF funds, perhaps through a mooted small grant scheme, could be to  
pay a designer to work on some icons for P2.

Again, the difference between the two is that OSMF cannot and should  
not do anything without community buy-in: the difference between  
supporting and controlling.



So how does this help to scratch your particular itch, Mikel  
(providing services for non-profits), or perhaps Oliver's (getting a  
good addressing database)?

Let's think of OSMF as a charity. I know that legally it isn't, but  
it's the closest analogue in UK society. It has to abide by its  
"charitable aims", which are well stated:

    OSMF: "supporting but not controlling the project... encouraging the
    growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data and to
    providing geospatial data for anybody to use and share"

    and OSM: "creates and provides free geographic data such as street
    maps to anyone who wants them... most maps actually have legal or
    technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using
    them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways"

So Oliver's itch could be considered for OSMF grant funding under  
"encouraging the development... of free geospatial data" and "creates  
and provides free geographic data". This might pay for development of  
an iPhone "OSM Address Collector" app or something.

Your itch could be justified under "providing geospatial data" and  
"provides free geographic data". This might pay for some degree of  
tile hosting for non-profits.[1]

In both cases, though, they have to be "supporting not controlling the  
project". So we would need answers to two questions:

    1. Does the community believe this is worth doing?
    2. If it's worth doing, does the community believe it's worth
       doing through grant funding, or would it prefer to do it itself?

It's implausible to ask the community every single time. So I suggest  
that, when the outline of a small grant scheme is put to the community  
for consideration, it comes with the principles which say how OSMF  
would answer these questions for each application. Drawing up those  
guidelines would be a good thing for this group to do.

cheers
Richard

[1] it's not really germane to this discussion whether personally I  
think either of these are brilliant ideas or lousy ones, of course :)