[OSM-talk] Import guidelines & OSMF/DWG governance

[Christian Rogel]

Le 20 sept. 2012 à 18:59, Simon Poole a écrit :
>> .
> While a more top down organisation of OSM a la Wikipedia or other organisations is imaginable, there has never been a community consensus that such a step would be desirable (if anything it is exactly the opposite). So while the OSMF provides the formal structure for the working groups, most policy decisions are not made or even vetted  by the OSMF board, but are simply decided by the people interested in the issues at hand and (particularly in the case of the DWG) the people that do the work. Not to mention the far larger number of policies (tagging and others) that are not in the remit of any specific working group and are decided by the OSM community at large.


Yes, the OSMF has not be established as a topdown organization, but it has to fulfill 
its commitments for maintaining the servers and the free data inside.
Art. 4 of the Memorandum of Association :
"In support of the objects, but not otherwise, the Company shall have power to do 
all things incidental or conducive to the attainment of the objects or any of them."

That includes responsibility for attaining the objects.

So, as we have a DWG a making tremendous efforts for maintaining a good policy
for the data (including the boring chase of proprietary ones), it may happen and it
will happen more and more that a projected decision exceed the field of the data
policy to jump into a "political" field.
In those rare cases, the Board of Directors has to be put in the loop, before going further.
We have a good example with the recommendation of a special account muted without
announcement and explanation to an obligation.
One more time, no personal reproach here.
But from that example, the Board must think of the growing difficulties to handle and be
prepared for that.
It will be no use saying DWG is appertaining to the community as it is no more and no
less than an efficient working group fueled by the contributors propositions. 
Responsibility is up to the Board when speaking of rules applicable maybe  to every 
contributor or for managing a tool or a resource specific to a part of the World.

Christian Rogel
OSMF Member


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