Monthly Archives: September 2025

Meet the new Core Software Engineer

Hello all! My name is Pablo Brasero Moreno, a software engineer and long-time enthusiast of Open Source Software and Open Data. I am honoured and grateful to have been selected by the OSMF as Core Software Engineer, thanks the funds provided by the Sovereign Tech Agency.

At a personal level, I grew up in Seville, Spain. In 2004 I moved to the UK and, after living for many years in London, England, now I’m established in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In my own time I explore Northern Ireland with my family, read sci-fi novels, listen to heavy metal music, attend concerts, play bass guitar (badly), and try to learn languages (even more badly, currently attempting Mandarin Chinese). Did I mention I have a B1 certificate in Esperanto?

I have been involved in some capacity with Open Source Software since I first installed Linux in my computer in 1998, first contributing with Spanish translations (over email!), and later taking part in the OSS explosion brought by the creation of GitHub. I have worked with many technology stacks over my career, but for a long time the primary one has been Ruby on Rails. I have used Ruby in many environments, from helping clients bootstrap businesses out of napkin sketches, to participating in the architecture and growth of banking applications. Since 2019 I am a freelancer, and I cannot but feel so lucky to have been available at the time when OSMF announced this position.

Without being a huge contributor to OSM, I was aware of it at least as early as 2015, when I made my first edits while visiting Mexico. In the last couple of years I have started mapping playgrounds, as that strikes a balance between my interest to contribute and my family’s patience to wait for me while I fiddle on my phone.

I am not here to dictate what features should exist in the the OSM website, or what specific issues should be fixed. I am here to learn about the needs of the community, relieve the workload of the volunteers, support contributors new and old, provide reviews and guidance on software engineering questions, and overall help bring our collective vision of OSM to fruition.

You will be hearing from me soon, in the form of GitHub comments/issues/PRs, working with Minh Nguyễn with news and summaries related to development of the platform, talking to many of you directly in order to understand your points of view, and generally anywhere where I can help.

I cannot wait to working with and for y’all!

OSM Awards 2025 Voting

OSM Awards logo 529px

The community voting for the OpenStreetMap Awards 2025 is open! During the call for nominees, you submitted more than a hundred of them. Then, a number of active community members have prepared a shorter list. Now it is again your turn: choose who gets an award during State of the Map in Manila.

We have 28 nominees to choose from 7 categories:

  • Core Systems Award
  • Innovation Award
  • Influential Writing Award
  • Greatness in Mapping Award
  • Expanding the Community Award
  • Team Achievement Award
  • Ulf Möller Memorial Award

Every one of these worked hard, and deserves every bit of our love. You don’t have to choose only one nominee per category: that would be an impossible choice, given we have so many great people on the list. Click as many checkboxes as you like, even all of them. What matters is not winning, but knowing that hundreds of people support you and your project. The main point of a community is to support its members, and this is your chance to do that. Don’t forget to press the “Vote” button afterwards.

And do use the fact that you can change or add to your votes at any time until the voting ends on 30 September 2025, right before the State of the Map 2025 conference, at which winners will be announced.

Do not postpone visiting the website — spend a minute right now. Please vote now awards.openstreetmap.org and show your appreciation!

The State of the Map Working Group

The State of the Map conference is the annual, international conference of OpenStreetMap, organised by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is an international project to create a free map of the world. To do so, we, thousands of volunteers, collect data about roads, railways, rivers, forests, buildings and a lot more worldwide. Our map data can be downloaded for free by everyone and used for any purpose – including commercial usage. It is possible to produce your own maps which highlight certain features, to calculate routes etc. OpenStreetMap is increasingly used when one needs maps which can be very quickly, or easily, updated.

2025 OSMF Board Election – Online voting is open until 13 September at 16:00 UTC, when the Annual General Meeting will commence

OpenStreetMap Foundation logo
Official OSM logo by Ken Vermette, CC-BY-SA 3.0 & trademarks apply.

Voting for the 2025 board election has started. You can read the board candidates’ answers and manifestos here.

Emails were sent to eligible OSM Foundation members today, and link directly to the voting page – listing each candidate in random order and allowing you to rank the candidates in order of preference.

Eligibility to vote

You are eligible to vote in the election if

  • you have been a member for the full 90 days prior to the date of the Annual General Meeting (which will take place on 13 September 2025), and
  • your membership is not in arrears 7 days before the date of the Annual General Meeting, and
  • you are a natural person.

OpaVote voting email

If you are eligible to vote, the OpaVote email was sent to the email address associated with your OSM Foundation membership.

  • The subject of the email is: [OpenStreetMap Foundation] Voting on 2025 board election [some_random_letters]
  • The sender is: noreply at opavote.com

If you believe you should have received a voting email but can’t find it, please check your spam folder. If it’s still missing, send a message to the email addresses mentioned here.

Voting information and FAQ

You can find more information about voting and answers to frequently asked questions here. Please make sure to read the warning on the page before voting.

Deadline for voting: Saturday 13 September 2025 at 16:00 UTC,

The polls will remain open for one week, closing on Saturday 13 September 2025 at 16:00 UTC, when the Annual General Meeting (which you can join online) will commence. We kindly ask you to vote in advance.

Do you want to translate this and other blog posts in another language..? Send an email to communication@osmfoundation.org with subject: Helping with translations in [your language]

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

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OpenStreetMap at UN Open Source Week

by Minh Nguyễn
Core Software Development Facilitator, OpenStreetMap Foundation

In June, I had the privilege of representing OpenStreetMap as part of the Sovereign Tech Agency’s delegation at UN Open Source Week in New York City. Joining me was Sarah Hoffmann, who maintains several well-known OSM software projects. This was a unique opportunity to raise OSM’s profile among global institutional supporters of open source projects and promote best practices for fostering and sustaining authentic open source communities.

Among the open source projects represented at the event, OSM stands out as an open data project, giving us a special perspective on issues of governance and community-building. At the unconference-style “Maintain-A-Thon”, Sarah shared some of her deep experience as maintainer of Nominatim in discussing how to create accessible entry points for new contributors. A few steps away, I joined open source maintainers from around the world as we discussed our challenges in internationalizing our projects and communities to serve a more global audience.

(Meanwhile, Wikipedians onboarded a large group of new contributors at an editathon across the room. Maybe in the future we can carve out some space for a mapathon too.)

The UN’s Trusteeship Council room is full as an International Telecommunication Union official speaks before attendees at DPI Day.

As the discussion came around to topics such as contributor retention and developing governance models, I was struck by the familiar challenges that our various projects have faced, even though they’re in different fields and at such different stages of maturity.

  • How do we accommodate volunteers coexisting with paid developers and individuals coexisting with institutional partners?
  • How do we build a pipeline that transforms “takers” into “makers”?
  • How do we ensure that the community feels heard without allowing the project to fall victim to analysis paralysis?

    It was fascinating to hear about the approaches that larger projects with institutional backing have taken, but our grassroots, decentralized structure would likely require some extra creativity. At least we’re in touch and can learn from each other going forward, since there are no magic solutions.

Just like at any OSM conference, the most interesting part was the hallway track. We had the privilege of meeting a number of representatives from open source program offices (OSPOs) in the public sector, civil society, and academia. Some had heard of OSM but only knew us as a map data vendor or some sort of alternative to Google Maps. It’s always fun to meet people who think they know about GIS and maps and introduce them to the very concept of a map rooted in a community. University OSPOs were particularly interested in our story, as OSM is a whole constellation of projects that use a variety of technologies. Here’s hoping something comes of that.

In the meantime, we have plenty of technical debt as well as some low-hanging fruit for improving how the projects run day to day. I’m excited about the opportunity to bring in a Core Software Engineer who over time can hopefully complement the irreplaceable efforts of our volunteers. Whether you’re a coder or not, there’s a place for you to thrive in OSM.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor