[OSM-talk] From osmf-talk: "Balancing the presence of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT US Inc) in the OpenStreetMap Foundation"

[Christoph Hormann]

On Saturday 28 November 2015, Tom Taylor wrote:
> [...]
>
> As a naive lurker on the lists, I took the announced candidacies at
> face value. That is, committed individuals decided individually to
> run for office. I agree that if all of them got elected, HOT would
> dominate the Board, but that is surely not a foregone conclusion. But
> do you really have evidence of a HOT conspiracy as opposed to a set
> of committed individuals?

Within the general OSM community it is probably not a widespread 
assumption that there is a cabal within HOT that pulls the strings 
behind the curtains - although there are events where you can get this 
idea - like when several people from HOT suddenly turn up in a 
discussion all representing the same standpoint.  But many mappers 
notice that people engaged with HOT often share certain views and 
approaches to things that are less common among other mappers.  You can 
see this to some extent in the answers to the questions for the OSMF 
board candidates.

So when people have reservations w.r.t. board candidates with a HOT 
background this does not necessarily mean they have a problem with the 
HOT project or its organization or its influence on the OSMF.  It could 
simply be they have reservations regarding the views shared by those 
people which could well be the same views that also motivated them for 
participating in HOT.

> I note the references to Kate Chapman as representative of HOT. She
> is no longer executive director there.

This probably deserves some clarification:  In contrast to the OSMF 
where everyone able to spend the membership fee can become member 
membership of the HOT origanization is restricted, the current members 
vote who can become a new member.  See

https://hotosm.org/voting-members

Also in contrast to the OSMF activities of the HOT membership are not 
generally public (feel free to correct me if i am wrong here).  Also 
HOT members have certain obligations of contributing to HOT activities 
as outlined on

https://hotosm.org/sites/default/files/HOT_Membership_Code.pdf

According to the available information Kate is a member of HOT - so are 
several candidates for the OSMF board:

Mikel Maron
Joseph Reeves
Yantisa Akhadi

Other candidates are active in HOT to some extent (like participating in 
HOT mapping tasks) but are not members of the HOT organization.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/