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

[Simon Poole]

As a relative newcomer to the project, in the handful of years I've
participated it has always struck me how little alignment of goals there
is in  the community as a whole (I'm not saying it is surprising, just
that is so). Outside the very generic mission that OSM  "creates and
distributes free geographic data for the world" it is difficult to find
common ground. So not only to we tend to disagree on how to get to our
goal (the strategy) there are a number of different views on what those
goals actually are (outside of hand wavy very generic statements).

The exercise towards the end of the SWG to define core values for the
project could be seen as an attempt to document some aspects of what
common ground there is, however it never matured (IMHO) to a level that
the result could be published as a formal document and currently molders
well hidden on the foundation web site at
ttp://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Core_Values

I'm fairly sure that prior to any strategic exercise we need to take a
step back and have a look at what this project wants to achieve in the end.

Simon