Sorry but I avoid making any assumptions about people. The only way someone can guarantee something is by being transparent about it.
1 Like
I understand you’re trying to defend yourself, but you didn’t respond to my suggestion, and we can see that what you said is false from just reading this thread. You’ve made numerous assumptions about people here, including in the post I quoted - but you’re assuming bad faith actions.
Again, I recommend walking away for a few days. You are harming your own relationship with this community right now. You can achieve your goal of transparency without doing that.
7 Likes
Potential donors should find maximum transparency in OpenStreetMap. Financial questions should therefore be treated with great respect, which does not seem to be the case here. This is disturbing.
NorthCrab appreciates your effort to bring light, trust and security to this project is extremely important to OpenStreetMap.
Volunteer work is to be welcomed, but if OpenStreetMap has to pay for this with a lack of transparency, this should be rejected.
2 Likes
Sorry, I meant something else, I don’t assume something is safe/positive until proven otherwise. And transparency is the easiest way of proving something. The same logic can be applied to software. You don’t assume that some piece of software is safe until proven otherwise.
Transparency within the OSM community holds the utmost importance for me. If I didn’t value transparency, I could simply use GMaps or something similar. I would never have become a part of this community if it lacked transparency.
The github issue was merely alerting us to this thread and asking us to reply and both people that were tagged had already done so when I closed it so it had served it’s purpose surely?
4 Likes
Given your 1st response under that post, you anticipated further discussion, yet you closed it down. At the time of posting, I believe, you were the only person who noticed it. With respect, are you closing issues for stats?
Nobody here has disagreed that transparency is good, but it’s not some automatic process where all the data you wish for is always available. Its lack of availability doesn’t mean malice or incompetence in most cases. It frequently means someone didn’t think it was relevant or didn’t have time to report it.
Regardless, you can get a much better response by asking about things you don’t understand and for which information isn’t available than by assuming that someone witheld it. Here’s how you could have rewritten your initial post to get the information you’re looking for and respect the contributions of the people who are trying to help you:
Hi, I’m concerned about some information I found in the OSM budget that suggests that we are spending 25,000 Euros a year on AWS costs. I don’t support AWS and do not want OSM to support it either. Can someone direct me to more information on the source of these costs and if anyone is working to eliminate them?
The humility of asking while recognizing you don’t have all of the details or all of the knowledge that the team has can lead to the transparency you are looking for. By coming in accusing and assuming instead of asking, you’ve put up a barrier between you and the transparency you want. Again, as a peer who wants many of the same things as you, I recommend taking a break and coming back asking questions, not trying to find little holes to poke in the things others have said. It will get you answers much faster and keep your relationship with the community intact.
10 Likes
All three of us posted to the issue more or less simultaneously I think. At the time I didn’t even realise the person that opened it was the same person that had started this thread - rather I thought it was just some helpful person trying to point this out but I was so shocked by the insanely large number that I expressed some bafflement.
In any case there was no point having the debate in two places so closing it in favour of this discussion would still be the right thing to do as this is the more public form so given the seriousness of the accusation being levelled it needs to be responded to here where the larger audience will see the response.
5 Likes
A quick close-down of a discussion was quite offending to me. This indicated an unwillingness of continuing of an open discussion from your side.
At the point of closing the issue, you were the only person who responded, I did not even @ you.
I think this is false, you responded “Where on earth did you get that idea exactly?” which quite clearly indicates the opposite.
I agree, but a closed issue may indicate to some people a resolved matter. And none of the @ people responded. I really felt a lack of respect from you in that moment. Would it hurt if the discussion was open for at least an hour?
1 Like
I see no seriousness of the accusation here, just a request for transparency. Instead of being dismissed, you would simply have to say please tell us all open questions and we will create an official answer. The argument that we work on a voluntary basis is an excuse that is often heard, OpenStreetMap has long been too important for this, and should have a budget that no longer requires pure volunteer work. The sums mentioned are absolutely ridiculous given the importance of OpenStreetMap, and should include a much higher amount for paid staff.
No, I believe it is clear to many that this was far more than “just a request.” It was, a “coming out swinging,” very “hot,” VERY “serious” accusation that “spending €25,000 on Amazon” is something that must be answered as to “Why?” (with angry “fists pounding on the table” as this was done) — and right now, while the correct answerer is doing his best to say “I can do so on Wednesday after my well-deserved vacation.” Be a reasonable human, please. The truth is that there is no such amount of spending going on (as a quick, short version to “plug the initial hole of inquisition”), this is perfectly reasonable.
“If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.”
Do you (or does the OP) have some constructive way or method ahead to provide the funds for such payments / salaries? We are listening…
4 Likes
Thank you for not forgetting about me but what exactly do I have to do with this topic? You made it sound like I am somehow connected with that statement.
I’ve read it, and my many posts in response are reminders that excuses are not shields from criticism - expect people to respond to you based on your behavior, not your excuses for your behavior. If many members of a community I cared about were telling me that they didn’t like how I was talking to them, I’d want to take that pretty seriously.
9 Likes
I couldn’t agree more. I could have approached the thread with more respect, but a crucial aspect was also to critique the excessive use of AWS in terms of finances. I wanted to express my frustration because I firmly believe that there’s no room for such things within OSM. While many individuals raised concerns about my assertive tone, as more information came to light, I found it increasingly difficult not to be astounded by the contradictory statements issued by the OWG. Initially, when I began the thread, I wasn’t fully aware of the extent of this issue. I always assumed that OSM was an organization driven by transparency. I hope you can empathize with my feelings when it turned out to be otherwise.
Additionally, I couldn’t resist addressing attempts to downplay the situation. I view this as a serious matter. I felt compelled to maintain an assertive stance, especially considering multiple instances where the conversation was being redirected, whether intentionally or not. It was crucial for me to keep the discussion focused on this single topic.
1 Like
We have a volunteer board of directors, volunteer working groups, and a (tiny) paid staff for a reason: to competently run the organization and its core services.
This dumpster fire of a thread has managed to do nothing more than waste all of those peoples’ time responding to breathless conspiracy theories by a community member that lacked the understanding of how the organization operates – and quite rudely at that – rather than adding value to OSM.
So please, in the future, if something “seems insane to you”, your next thought ought to be “so therefore I must not understand it properly because there’s a bunch of really smart people in charge.”
If you wish to be more involved in the decision-making or direction of the organization, run for a seat on the foundation or a local chapter board, volunteer for a working group, or create something of value to the greater OSM community. As I’ve noted in other threads – your participation is not required.
The manner in which you’ve chosen to interact with the well-respected community members on this thread is so utterly unreasonable that I doubt most community members would want to engage with you. I would suggest that you avoid picking fights like this if you wish to have your ideas heard and respected.
19 Likes
Okay, 25,000€ in S3, what do I know.
I do believe that making OSM operations transparent is crucial. I don’t consider it a waste of time, and I apologize if you do. I’ve expressed my concerns about certain issues that, in my opinion, are very critical.
I called having 86TB in Fastly logs insane, as I believe it’s an accurate description. Fortunately, this situation no longer persists. However, I urge you to consider the surrounding context. I mentioned this as an example of what might be happening with S3, as this information seems to be not publicized.
This is the only occasion where I’ve characterized something as insane. And in my view, it’s difficult to dispute this assessment. To put it in perspective, 86TB is roughly equivalent to ~666 times the size of a 129GB OSM Planet file. That’s an immense amount of storage space devoted to log files from a CDN alone, which, at the end of the day, are just fancy text files.
Please don’t hesitate to present counterarguments if you disagree with the characterization of this situation as insane. I am open to engaging in a discussion about it. And please, don’t focus on out-of-context statements alone, please consider the complete picture.
Again, I don’t want to focus too much on the matter of 86TB log files. I brought it up once more primarily because you disagreed with my characterization of it. If you have any objections, I kindly ask you to share your reasoning.
1 Like
I hope everybody has cooled off a bit overnight 
It is a truism that people will get upset over financials, sometimes over sums that in the grand scheme of things are small. The OSMF is proud that it is a cost-efficient and frugal organisation, and that makes accusations of throwing money out of the window bite a lot harder than it would for other comparable orgs. But definitely the time to provide input on the budget be it policy (“no AWS”) or financial (“that can be done far cheaper”) is during the budget process, and I respectfully suggest if there are questions later in the year they should be directed to the treasurer (in a friendly non-accusatory manner).
We do have a bit of a financial reporting / control weakness in that currently we are are only producing annual financials. On and off there have been attempts to do this for each quarter however these have always fizzled out after a while, mainly because they are a lot of work, nobody ever looked at them and the relevant sums were small in any case. But the reason to produce them is exactly for situations like this thread, where it would be helpful to have a current comparison of financial performance vs. budget that could be pointed to when questions arise. I would consider it a good idea, particularly given that the budget has grown substantially over the last couple of years, that the OSMF would (re-)commit to producing quarterly financials again.
PS: how to account for Amazon credits and the spending of them is an interesting question, just as accounting policy wrt other in kind donations (for example Fastly). How we do this depends very much on local legal requirements, but I would suggest not to claim that there is no cost associated with any specific line item if it isn’t actually a free service.
6 Likes
I would honestly recommend that people stop feeding the troll. Discourse has a great “ignore” function.
7 Likes