[OSM-talk] Paweł's q: what can be done?

[Frederik Ramm]

Pawel,

    you are too impatient, at least too impatient for the occasionally 
glacial pace at which things move in OSM(F).

You have been with OSM for about 6 months now if I'm not mistaken, and 
most of your recent messages (at least most of the messages that reach 
me) are about how and why you might be leaving. Most people take a bit 
longer than that!

You are also jumping to conclusions ("OSMF doesn't want to set agenda 
for the future") - maybe OSMF simply wants to think it over?

The work you've done for OSM is undoubtedly of a high standard, and your 
"history tab" prototype was widely acclaimed. I don't want to diminish 
that effort at all - but I do feel that I need to put in into 
perspective. There are many others who have, over the years, done much 
more work that you have, in their spare time, and who haven't after only 
six months sent lots of emails about having to abandon all their work if 
OSMF doesn't finally manage to implement strategic planning or so.

In fact, for most coders, what OSMF does or doesn't to was quite 
irrelevant. It seems that in your particular case you see a connection 
between coding for OSM and the OSMF because ultimately you would like to 
get paid for your work, and you don't see OSMF paying developers without 
a strategic plan. Is that reading correct, or do you simply fear that 
without a strategically planning organisation the OSM project will die 
and your contributions with it?

You have, several times, mentioned KDE e.V. as a good example. I looked 
at their quarterly report and indeed, personally I would quite approve 
of OSMF going in that direction. It seems that the KDE people are 
spending a lot of money to facilitate meetings between volunteer 
developers, paying for flights and accomodation and such. Of course they 
are a software development project, whereas in OSM the software 
development is only one part of several, but still, things like paying 
for a developer to fly to a code sprint or so sounds like something that 
would make sense. But even though software development is at the core of 
the KDE project, KDE e.V. doesn't pay for coding work as far as I can 
see; their staff is administrative only.

Also, KDE e.V. is now 15 years old, the OSMF is 7; you should be looking 
at KDE e.V. documents from 2005 to make a fair comparison ;) - but even 
back then they had a nice quarterly report: 
http://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-quarterly-2005Q3.pdf

Finally, I am somewhat puzzled by the connection that you (and also 
Jeff) seem to make between the perceived lack of planning and the 
current trademark issue that spawned the thread. You wrote

> On one hand OSMF is telling us they don't want any strategic planning
> and involvement, on the other they are redacting and editing data and
> wiki.

And Jeff followed up:

> I think Paweł has hit on a key question: does the OSMF have plans to operate and lead OSM in a more efficient, organized manner or not?

In what way would an organisation with great strategic planning, one 
that is "efficient" and "organised", handle such a trademark issue 
differently? In how far is the current trademark issue a sign of lack of 
planning? I really don't get it. Is there a connection between these 
issues that goes beyond "both are issues where the OSMF is criticised by 
some"?

Bye
Frederik

(I am a member of the OSMF board but this is, as always, completely my 
personal opinion.)

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