OpenStreetMap Foundation og valg

[forteller]

Er det noen her som følger med på OSM Foundation (OSMF)?

Jeg har ikke gjort det, men i går kom jeg over en tekst (via WeeklyOSM) som gjorde at jeg tenkte at flere nok burde begynne å følge med.

Neste valg av styremedlemmer til OSMF er 12. desember, og teksten advarer om at ting går i feil retning for tiden. Den er skrevet av en jeg ikke aner noe om, så jeg vet ikke hvor alvorlig jeg skal ta advarslene han kommer med, så det er også noe jeg ønsker å høre med dere om hva dere tenker om.

I teksten skriver Christoph Hormann blant annet:

Yet the new board in May started closing half of their meetings to the public and essentially stopped having any meaningful deliberation on decisions during the public meetings – or in other words: They have decided to explicitly not embrace the more parliament like nature the board has now as i explained in my last after-election analysis. This was somewhat disguised by calling the non-public board meetings ‘board chats’ but it is clearly visible that these are in fact board meetings – probably more so than the actual public board meetings which more and more degrade into a play presented as a facade to the public while the actual decision making all happens non-publicly now.

Bewilderment and concern about many of the more recent board decisions and choices is fairly widespread among experienced community members. Many of them articulate that more carefully and less pointed than me but the overall sentiment is similar. And the factual refusal of the board members to engage in a critical argument based discussion in public in most cases does not help.

As i have written elsewhere these fairly massive changes will lead and are leading to more and more people starting to regard the OSMF as a commercial actor representing specific interests rather than a selfless advocate and supporter of the values of the project and its core interests and goals.

The OSM community is likely going to have to deal with an adversarial OSMF in the future more often than in the past – not so much due to decisions deliberately being made against the interest and goals of the project but due to neglect in considering consequences and listening to bad advise guided by special interests.

Så dette høres jo ganske ille ut. Det skal sies at han også har noen gode ord å si om det nye styret i OSMF, men jeg trakk ut det verste.

Som sagt vet jeg ikke hvor mye jeg kan stole på dette eller ikke, det vil alltid være folk som klager og overdriver problemene. Kanskje Cristoph er en crank for alt jeg vet, jeg er godt kjent med at sånne figurer kan gjøre mye skade gjennom å rope opp om at himmelen faller.

Men jeg tenkte det var verdt å snakke om dette her i det norske miljøet. Er ting så ille som han skal ha det til, eller i nærheten? Er det noe vi bør gjøre for å bedre situasjonen? Hva bør vi tenke på fram mot neste valg? Osv…