Foundation
The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a UK registered not-for-profit company which supports the OpenStreetMap project. Official information available from the foundation website.
Purpose
The Foundation was established to:
- 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.
- To afford some degree of protection from copyright and liability suits.
- To provides a vehicle for fundraising to support the project.
2012 AGM and election to board
- Details of the 2012 AGM, to be held at the State of the Map in Tokyo
- Details of the election to the board (you do not have to attend SotM to vote)
Membership
Anyone can join the Foundation through the foundation website for £15. A members email-list is available to members to communicate with other members (anyone can read the discussion). Discounts for some OSMF organised events such as the annual State of the Map conference) are offered. Members can stand for election at the AGM each year and can vote for the board (in person or by proxie). Join
You do not have to be a member in order to use or contribute to OpenStreetMap.
Working Groups
Many of the activities of the foundation are carried out by working groups. The following working groups are currently active:-
Communication Working Group
- Support and maintain the OSM Foundation website
- Support and maintain communication tools between OSM Foundation members and board
- Promote communication within the OSM community
- Improve tools for supporting OSM membership subscriptions and renewals.
Data Working Group
Main article: Data working group Deals with issues relating to copyright infringement and disputes.
Licence Working Group
To develop a new Open Data License for the project.
Local Chapters Working Group
Main article: Foundation/Local Chapters To establish a framework for federated Local Chapters of the the Foundation where local or special interest groups are able to set up a formal relationship with the Foundation. Federated groups will also be able to represent themselves to other official bodies such as the Government and media organisations [1] This group is currently looking for local OSM leaders.
Technical Working Group
Deals with issues related to the operation of servers and other related operational matters.
Governance
Board
The board as elected at the 2012 AGM:-
- Chairman – TBD: chairman@osmfoundation.org
- Secretary – TBD: secretary@osmfoundation.org
- Treasurer – Oliver Kühn: oliver@osmfoundation.org
Minutes
Formal meetings normally held monthly and the Board Meeting Minutes are published on the foundation website.
Communications
- To contact the board in normal circumstances please email the secretary using secretary@osmfoundation.org.
- The full board can be emailed using board@osmfoundation.org.
- The Officers (Steve, Henk and Oliver) can be emailed using officers@osmfoundation.org
History
| First Name | Last Name | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steve | Coast | Elected | term extended | Re-elected | term extended | term extended | ||
| Andy | Robinson | Elected | Re-elected | Re-elected | ||||
| George | James | (aka Etienne Cherdlu) | Elected | Re-elected | Not elected | |||
| Michael | Collinson | Elected | Re-elected | Re-elected | ||||
| Mikel | Maron | Elected | Re-elected | Re-elected | term extended | Re-elected | ||
| Richard | Fairhurst | Elected | Elected | |||||
| Corey | Burger | Elected | ||||||
| Nick | Black | Elected | Not elected | |||||
| Henk | Hoff | Elected | Re-elected | term extended | term extended | Re-elected | ||
| Grant | Slater | Not Elected | ||||||
| Simone | Cortesi | Not elected | Elected | term extended | ||||
| Richard | Weait | Not elected | ||||||
| Ulf | Möller | Elected | ||||||
| Peter | Miller | Not elected | ||||||
| Hurricane | Coast | (nee McEwen) | Not elected | |||||
| Emilie | Laffray | Elected | ||||||
| Iván | Sánchez Ortega | Elected | ||||||
| Oliver | Kühn | Elected | term extended | |||||
| Lars | Franke | Not elected | ||||||
| Thea | Aldrich | (nee Clay) | Not elected | |||||
| Kate | Chapman | Not elected | Not elected | Not elected | ||||
| Matt | Amos | Elected | ||||||
| Dermot | McNally | Elected | ||||||
| Derick | Rethans | Not elected | ||||||
| Niccolo | Rigacci | Not elected | ||||||
| Eugene | Usvitsky | Not elected | ||||||
| Serge | Wroclawski | Not elected | ||||||
| Alex | Barth | Not elected | ||||||
| Frederik | Ramm | Elected | ||||||
| Simon | Poole | Elected |
Financial
Official information is available on the foundation website
Income
Income includes personal financial donations, corporate sponsorship, donations of hardware and bandwidth, foundation membership fees, conference registration fees commission. There is also income from retail affiliation schemes such as Storage Depot, Amazon. Sponsors have included MultiMap, Google, Yahoo, Cloud Made, ITO World. In reality donations from contributors will continue to be needed. The foundation may also be pursuing other Fund Raising Ideas
Income in the 11 months to Aug 30th 2008 was £17,000 and expenditure was £14,000. The main income was from sponsors of the State of the Map conference and registration fees (more)
The foundation intend to publish management accounts on a quarterly basis.
In addition to direct income to the foundation, Multimap has funded Steve Coast directly to spend some of his time working on the project (when?).Digital Pioneers provided funding for mapping parties in the Netherlands which went directly to Stichting Vrijschrift, a Dutch non-profit organisation (when?).
Outgoings
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.
Articles of association
The Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association for the OpenStreetMap Foundation are available from the Foundation website.
The foundation is currently discussing a 1st revision of the OSMF Articles of Association.
Proposals
This is a place for petitions and proposals from OSM contributors for consideration by the Foundation board. Proposals can be raised on this page in this section and should then be discussed and refined before being voted on (again on this page). The Foundation board is not required to act on the vote, but it may influence it's decisions and priorities.
Automatic membership to the OSMF for established users
Proposal
It has been proposed that membership of the foundation should automatically be given to 'established' OSM contributors[2]. The board have indicated that they would like to know the opinion of the community[3]. A definition of 'established' would need to be devised, however it might be something like 'Have contributed at least X manual change-sets in total, and at least Y manual change-set in each of the past M months and at least T change-sets in total'. If should be noted that the concept of 'established' users may also be useful when countering vandalism.
This proposal is still in draft form. Please feel free to adjust it or comment below.
Please indicate if you support this proposal ('I approve') or don't ('I disagree') below. I suggest all contributors should be eligible to vote, not just foundation members.
Comments
Please add (and sign) any comments and add links to related discussions on any talk lists on the subject.
Voting
Voting is not open. Voting will be opened when the proposal has been finalised.
Annual General Meetings
See http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings
