Foundation
OpenStreetMap Foundation now has its own website at [1]
The OpenStreetMap Foundation is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data and to providing geospatial data for anybody to use and share.
OpenStreetMap Foundation was incorporated by the registrar of companies for England and Wales on August 22nd, 2006 as a company limited by guarantee. The company registration number is 5912761.
What is the Foundation?
The OpenStreetMap Foundation was established to serve a number of purposes. Firstly, to be a custodian for the servers and services necessary to host the OpenStreetMap project. Specifically the foundation is the custodian of the servers located at UCL and the www.openstreetmap.org domain name.
Secondly the Foundation, as a UK registered limited company affords some degree of protection from copyright and liability suits. Previously Steve would have been personally liable for any action that might have been taken as a result of alleged copyright infringement.
Thirdly, the Foundation provides a vehicle for fundraising to support the project. As a non-profit organisation its articles of association legally prevent it from making a profit.
Last, but not least, the Foundation is owned by its members. The membership scheme provides a mechanism for interested people to have a say in the activities of the Foundation.
It is important to understand that the OpenStreetMap Foundation is not the same thing as the OpenStreetMap project. The Foundation does not own the OpenStreetMap data, is not the copyright holder and has no desire to own the data. Anyone can set up a few servers and host the OSM data using the same or different software. In this respect the Foundation is an organisation that performs fundraising in order to provides servers to host the project. Its role is to support the project, not to control it.
Many of the activities of the Foundation do not have a high profile. They involve meetings and discussions with potential donors and partners, preparation of proposals, and conference and event organising. Many of the discussions with potential donors are carried out confidentially and we only get to shout about them once a deal has been closed.
The Memorandum and Articles of Association is a formal and legal description of the aims of the Foundation it's rules and it's constitution.
Officers & Board
- Chairman (three year term - 2 years remaining) - Steve Coast (User:Steve) email: chairman@osmfoundation.org
- Secretary (one year term) - Andy Robinson (User:Blackadder) email: secretary@osmfoundation.org
- Treasurer (re-elected one year term) - Etienne Cherdlu (User:80n) email: treasurer@osmfoundation.org
Email: You can contact all three officers by sending an email to officers@osmfoundation.org
- Member at Large (one year term) - Corey Burger (User:CoreyBurger)
- Membership Secretary (one year term) - Michael Collinson - (User:Ewmjc) email: membership@osmfoundation.org
- Press, Media and Legal liaison (one year term) - Richard Fairhurst - (User:Richard) email: press@osmfoundation.org
- Business Development and Legal liaison (one year term) - Mikel Maron (User:Mikel) email: bisdev@osmfoundation.org
Member at Large roles will be defined at the next management meeting.
Email: You can contact the the whole of the board by sending an email to team@osmfoundation.org
Membership
Members of the Foundation are entitled to vote in the affairs of the Foundation. They have no special say in how the OpenStreetMap project is run, just the running of the Foundation. Anyone who wants to influence the activities of the Foundation is welcome to join.
Full Membership
Full membership is available to all. The membership fee is £15 per year and enables you to influence the direction of OpenStreetMap by being able to vote in elections for officers of the foundation. Members may also get discounts on some OSMF organised events (such as the State of the Map conference). You do not have to be a member in order to use or contribute to OpenStreetMap.
Full membership may be initiated by following the relevant section of the Donations page.
Preliminary Membership
This class of membership is now closed. People seeking to become Foundation members should follow the Full Membership information above.
Preliminary Members of the OpenStreetMap Foundation had the right to vote for the three principal officers of the foundation in the first vote. This vote was open from June 11, 2006 for a period of about 14 days. Preliminary members do not have any other rights or obligations.
Everyone subscribed to the talk@openstreetmap.org mailing list as at 09:50am on May 21, 2006 was eligible to become a Preliminary Member. Eligible people could become a Preliminary Member by either:
a) Making a donation of GBP 5.00 to OpenStreetMap, via the Donate button on the http://www.openstreetmap.org page (put "OSM Preliminary Membership" in the "Payment For" field, to indicate it is for this purpose); or:
b) Sending a postcard or letter to OSM, c/o (address to follow) containing the words "Preliminary Membership application for the OpenStreetMap foundation" and the email address used to subscribe to the talk@openstreetmap.org mailing list.
All applicants were notified by email when they had been accepted as Preliminary Members.
Annual General Meetings
- August 30 2008 The 2nd AGM of the OpenStreetMap Foundation
- August 11 2007 The 1st AGM of the OpenStreetMap Foundation
Finance
Detailed records of income (including donations) and expenditure by the Foundation are kept in accordance with UK accounting standards. The Foundation has a legal obligation to publish its accounts annually. As it was only incorporated on 22nd August 2006 no accounts have yet been published.
Until quite recently the turnover of the foundation was no more than a couple of hundred pounds a month and was probably not of much interest or importance. Recently the turnover has increased significantly, mainly due to the State of the Map conference. It is probably appropriate now to publish management accounts on a quarterly basis.
Our income is from a variety of sources and we continually strive to identify new funding channels. Currently these include personal donations, corporate sponsorship, donations of hardware and bandwidth, commission from retail affiliation schemes (Storage Depot, Amazon), foundation membership fees and most recently the State of the Map conference (registration fees and sponsorship).
The treasurer will try to personally acknowledge all donations and, where possible, give an indication of how that donation is likely to be spent.
Not all funding gets channelled through the Foundation. For example Multimap funds Steve Coast directly to spend some of his time working on the project. Another example, the Foundation submitted a proposal to Digital Pioneers and won funding to stimulate mapping parties in the Netherlands. This funding goes directly to Stichting Vrijschrift, a Dutch non-profit organisation, who actually have the responsibility for making the mapping parties happen there.
The membership was polled about how the Foundation's income should be spent and we received a mandate to spend 60% of income on hardware, 20% on promotion and 20% on legal matters. Currently, the Foundation's expenditure is mainly on server hardware, although some is spent on activities that promote the project (typically, travel expenses for speaking engagements). So far there have been no reasonable opportunities to spend any funds on legal issues.
The project can always benefit from more hardware and this is where most of the funding goes. Personally, I (writes 80n) am not keen on tapping contributors for donations since they already made their donations of time and effort to add map data. In this respect my belief is that beneficiaries of the map data should fund the project. We are indeed starting to see sponsorship from the likes of MultiMap, Google and Yahoo although the reality is that we still need to rely on donations from contributors, and judging by the funding model of projects like Wikipedia will probably always need to.
Expenditure
It was agreed at the irc meeting on July 11, 2006 that spending over the next 12 months should be apportioned roughly as follows:
- Legal 20%
- Hardware 60%
- Promotion (speaker's expenses etc) 20%