[Strategic] Tonight's meeting

[Dermot McNally]

Folks,

I have to send apologies for today's meeting - I am travelling and the
timing basically won't work. However, I have done some homework. Last
week we agreed to add suggestions for core values and I see that
several suggestions have gone in. I've just added a few more of the
thoughts I had. So as long as I can't be present, let me attempt to
explain a few aspects of my own suggestions and comment on some of the
others:

My last two proposals, about community and goals, are geared directly
at combatting some of the troublesome behaviours we have noted. Some
mappers have taken the view that they do not need to answer questions
from other mappers, to the extent of accusing them of sending spam. My
proposed value intends to enshrine the principle of communication and
attach it to the notion of operating in a community.

"Most important goal": Here too it's about attempting to prioritise a
mapping goal (and by all means we could rephrase that aspect of it)
and express our view that it's more important than some of the other
priorities many of us have, and yes, I pretty much am thinking of
licence pissing contests here. Notwithstanding the importance of our
open source heritage, I'm attempting to suggest that, in the event of
a tie, putting map data into peoples' hands wins out over principles
we may hold dear.

I mentioned last week that good core values should be in the form of
full sentences, and this is because they should be able to stand alone
as much as possible with very little context. As such, I'd urge the
writers of the single-word points to consider a full sentence
expressing the required sentiments.

My most specific point now goes to the "The software running..."
point. I suggest "should be" rather than "is" open-source, simply
because we can't predict what could happen in the future, but also
because "is" reads like a statement of fact rather than intent. So if
we wish to commit ourselves irrevocably to an OSS toolchain then
"shall be" or "shall always remain" would seem better.

FWIW, I think that even if we get no more suggestions we can distill
what's there into a very strong set of core values.

Cheers,
Dermot

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