[OSM-talk] OSM US Trails Working Group

[Eugene Alvin Villar]

Hi SteveA,

You might want to participate in the ongoing work to set up a Discourse
instance for OSM. This has integrated SSO with your OSM account (via
OAuth2) and is targeted to potentially replace the existing OSM forum,
mailing lists, and OSM Q&A website.

The test instance is here: https://community.openstreetmap.org/

Some documentation about it is here:
https://files.osmfoundation.org/apps/onlyoffice/s/KwYSgL7LSynDPtH

Unfortunately, most of the people working on this initiative are discussing
it in the OSM US Slack group. :/

~Eugene


On Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 3:09 AM stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:

> > On Sat, Oct 9, 2021 at 9:55 AM Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>
> wrote:
> > whichever medium you choose you'll exclude some people who refuse to use
> it. As long as it remains informal and you're not later told "this was
> agreed on Slack" I guess it's ok.
>
> > On Sat, October 9, 2021 at 12:06:17 PM PDT Zeke Farwell <
> ezekielf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Absolutely.  Currently the number of US mappers active on Slack is far
> greater than those active on this mailing list.  So Slack is currently the
> inclusive place for discussions to happen among the US mapper community.
> Despite the smaller number of active subscribers on this list, I did think
> it was important to post a message here as well in case there were
> interested folks who aren't also on Slack.  To really cover all the bases I
> would need to post on the OpenStreetMap Reddit, Discord, Telegram, forum,
> and probably other places as well.
>
> While the effect I might create here and now by posting feels to be likely
> quite minimal, I feel compelled to say so anyway:  please allow me to
> express my disappointment in what I see as the more-and-more widespread use
> of non-open (proprietary, commercial) methods of communication in OSM.
>
> I have referred to Slack as a "secret sauce walkie-talkie" before and do
> not use it at all, neither for OSM communication / collaboration nor any
> other purpose.  Why?  Because it seems (to me, obviously not others) that
> something proprietary and requiring a legal agreement with an onerous
> license (UNlike ODbL which is sensible and not onerous) is inconsistent
> with the spirit of OSM.  That said, it does appear that many use Slack for
> OSM collaboration, and because I appear to be a "refusenik" regarding
> Slack, I miss out on what is communicated via its closed platform.
> Frederick is correct ("whichever medium you choose you'll exclude some
> people..."), but he doesn't have to be correct forever in this regard.
>
> I get a lot done with talk lists and our wiki, two comm-techs which are
> open and "free" (in both senses).  Others find these to be insufficient and
> like or even prefer the interactivity that Slack provides.
>
> Zeke is correct in his exasperation (that we share) of "OSM Reddit,
> Discord, Telegram, forum and probably other places as well" being so
> scattered:  it seems everybody wants "in on" the (transparent) method of
> "capturing" (and OWNING) communication via a proprietary platform.  Yes,
> this is a longer term issue for OSM to "solve," but I continue to believe
> that there is an open source / open data method for these kinds of
> communications that OSM might "standardize" upon.  For example, Zoom, while
> proprietary, has an open source complement in Jitsi (fully web-based,
> meaning it doesn't suffer from "Windows but not Mac, Android but not
> iOS..." sorts of issues), with perhaps 80% to 85% of feature set overlap
> (not bad).  I have not examined the universe of potential open source
> candidates that might realistically similarly complement Slack, but I'm
> certain that (over the longer term) OSM can move towards such a platform.
> I have used (sometimes open, but alas, obsolete by now, usually closed,
> while employed by companies that use them) such collaboration software for
> decades:  no matter how "seemingly crude" the technology (and we are not
> "crude" today, except perhaps by future standards), there is ALWAYS a
> method to do this.  It usually takes some dedicated software development
> and ongoing maintenance, but the open source / open data community often,
> maybe even usually, is able to fill these niches where they appear (like
> here).
>
> Much as there is a US Trails Working group, (this is crossposted to talk;
> its origin is talk-us), there might be a "Real-time collaboration open
> software" group.  Well, I can hope, anyway.  Is anybody up for spearheading
> this clearly longer-term endeavor for our project?  I seriously dislike the
> continuing trend I see in OSM of us handing over our rights and data (via
> Slack's onerous licensing agreement, for example) to private companies
> rather than keeping them open, like they deserve to be.
>
> SteveA
> OSM Contributor (since 2009)
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
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