OpenStreetMap
I did small table for better understanding.
People in list above are respected. They did big contributions.
There was saying “OSMF doesn’t shape the community”. It now came to “OSMF has nothing to do with community”.
It ist not problem. Problem ist most influencive OSMF members have their own small business. They have to pay bills. And think of their company.
It is big problem.
You know why Frederik Ramm keeps upsetting himself of Database Bloat? GeoFabrik.de has low disk space. Not openstreetmap.org. OpenStreetMap only grows faster than his business. He even wants to delete buildings: http://osm.gryph.de/2012/06/openbuildingmap/
OpenStreetMap is changing licenz. Ist fine. But two months already diffs are not easy to set up, and no regular planet exists. It certanly gives more respect to GeoFabrik. Their extracts update daily. But it simply a way to remove competitors.
Look at license change bot.
https://github.com/zerebubuth/openstreetmap-license-change/commits/master
Commits? Almost only Matt Amos and Dermot McNally. Ich can not see Matt running his own small OSM business. And buisness of Dermot seems not connected to OSM.
If you want some thing from OSMF, all you get ist: “We are volonteers. We run on donated everything. We get no money for that. Fuck off and do it yourself.”
Fix information if Ich am wrong.
Jochen Topf maked http://openstreetmapdata.com/. It ist good. It has good data. It can be on http://planet.openstreetmap.org/. But no. It is small business. It has Donate button. That goes to Jochen who did tool, not OSM who did data.
Why mentioned Paul Norman? He helps cleaning bad NHD imports. At least tries to. Not all OSMF ist lazy.
OSMF runs precious servers. Has it any full time system admin to maintain it at least? Or any paid guy who will think of OSM, not own business?
Discussion
Comment from iandees on 1 June 2012 at 22:32
(Your English is obviously better than you show here. These posts would convey a lot more if you stopped using a faux German/English mix.)
You begin your post with a picture and by saying “It is big problem.” Can you be more clear about what you view the problem to be? I’m assuming you see some conflict of interest in our OSMF board members? If you see such a conflict, then run against them or convince others to replace them.
Having a diverse group of board members is a good thing. Each of them are members of the community in various ways while at the same time some of them are using OSM data in their business. This isn’t a bad thing.
Comment from WorstFixer on 1 June 2012 at 23:16
Ian,
I want not say they are bad. They all did a lot for OpenStreetMap.
But when they have to make decisions, decisions may be flawed. Because they have to pay bills, and OSM gives them no money.
Their small business gives them money, not some “license change bot” they promised to run on April Fool’s day.
“We get no money for this” becomes universal excuse. People may ignore any OSM-related process (imports, data quality, license change) just because they “have other job”.
OSMF should hire some employees for these tasks. To have someone responsible for what they do.
Comment from compdude on 1 June 2012 at 23:32
@iandees With all due respect, it is not that important nor necessary to to mention his bad English.
Regarding WorstFixer’s post, I really agree that OSMF needs to play a bigger role in supporting OSM. Especially with major changes that are happening, like the license change. I would have appreciated more information about the license change, and I would have appreciated it if said information was posted on the User Diaries, not just the mailing lists. Not everyone knows about them and I would say less than 25% of mappers actually subscribe to the mailing lists, and even I do not subscribe to those. Because I am not part of this clique of mailing-list subscribers, I felt like I was pretty much left in the dark about the license change.
I don’t really think that OSMF needs to have paid staff. It just needs people like WorstFixer who are committed to improving the project. And those people should listen to the advice of others, and implement their suggestions. It’s fine for those people to have actual jobs or have their own business, but they ought to be enthusiastic about volunteering their time to OSMF. And of course, improving it!
Comment from Vclaw on 1 June 2012 at 23:32
What is your real name? What is your real OSM account? What company are you working for?
Comment from pumbur on 2 June 2012 at 04:09
…responsible…
Comment from !i! on 2 June 2012 at 08:03
In every Open* project there comes the time where people (mostly project seniors) think about starting a business. Of course because they have to pay the bill, but (IMHO) this is because it’s what external people request. This is a logical consequence and another step of the evolution of our ecosystem.
It’s not on me to judge if this results in problems for the OSMF, as I haven’t that much to do with the team. Sure people might get in conflict, but why should we expect this in that negative way? On the other hand the business allows people to spend time on such management tasks, as most volunteeres will run in troubles to spend so much time for ‘professional tasks’.
Comment from robert on 2 June 2012 at 14:42
Jesus they’re really hiding around every corner for you, aren’t they?
Comment from Vincent de Phily on 2 June 2012 at 21:20
I don’t really see any problem here. Everybody has to pay some bills, and if a large proportion of OSMF member have their own company, it’s probably because the kind of people who volunteer for a foundation is also the kind of people who would start their company.
Does it cause a conflict of interest ? Yes and no : if their business is OSM-based, they’ll want OSM to trive, just like the rest of the community. Commercial use of OSM is a perfectly valid use-case (if not, we’d have a different licence). It’s even an important use-case, because commercial use brings sponsoring and visibility.
A conflic of interest would arrise if somebody pushed for something that’s detrimental to the rest of the community. If you spot one, then certainly go ahead and denounce it. But I dont see any here.
DB bloat is always something to keep in mind (throwing more hardware at it only works to a point), and Frederik Ramm’s comments about buildings is not about deleting it, but about thinking of ways to deal with it (also, it is not an example of DB bloat).
I have no idea what you are trying to say about the license bot (that it is progressing slowly ? we know that) or about http://openstreetmapdata.com/ (he shouldn’t have a donate button ?).