Author Archives: Dorothea

About Dorothea

Posting mostly in a Communication Working Group capacity (and often with text written collaboratively among CWG and others).

Self-introduction of the new iD developer contracted by OSMF

The OpenStreetMap Foundation board welcomes Martin Raifer, whom we contracted to work on the maintenance and development of iD, the default editor at openstreetmap.org. Below you will find his self-introduction. Martin will continue working for 20% of his time for HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology) and he will have regular meetings with the OpenStreetMap community regarding iD. We would like to remind that any iD-related disputes will be dealt by the OSMF Software dispute resolution panel.

Hello, my name is Martin Raifer, on OSM I use the username tyr_asd. I’m happy to announce that starting with November 2021, I will take over the maintenance and continue the development of the iD editor (OSM’s default mapping web-application) as a freelancer and will be paid for that by the OSMF. I’m feeling humbled that the OSMF entrusted me with this important task!

my goals for iD

To put it simply: I want iD to be the best possible mapping tool! It should optimally fulfill its prominent, important and also delicate role of being the OSM’s default map editor.

iD should remain an intuitive tool which everyone can use, from beginners performing their first edits to the most experienced of mappers. Since many users will continue to have their first point of contact with mapping using the iD editor, there is the need for a strong focus on good usability and user experience design. At the same time, I find it also important to not neglect the needs of more advanced users who like to work efficiently and sometimes need more specialized ways to manipulate OSM data.

In many ways, iD already does a quite good job of affording people to edit the map. Of course there are always things to improve, stuff to optimize and features to change.

my background

I’m an active OSM mapper since 2009, and have been contributing to the OSM software ecosystem in various ways. Some of you might know overpass-turbo – the web front end I created for the Overpass API – or some of my other OSM-related projects. Professionally, I have worked with OSM data first at an urban bike mobility startup, then as a freelancer for a project of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, and became a research associate at Heidelberg University/HeiGIT (more about that below) where I helped organizing the State of the Map conference in Heidelberg in 2019.

In the past, I already contributed occasionally to the development of several OSM’s core software: for example the osm website, the editor-layer-index and the iD editor. For iD I helped with beta-testing in the early days, added presets, submitted bug fixes and implemented a few small features like the support for WMS background layers.

my affiliation with HeiGIT

I will continue to work for the HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology at Heidelberg University) alongside my work on the iD editor to a small extent of one day per week. At HeiGIT, I will continue to collaborate on mostly OSM-related research activities, with a strong focus on data quality. In addition, I will also support some teaching activities such as lectures at Heidelberg University.

The main chunk of my time will of course go into the development of the iD editor! I will do my best to cleanly separate my activities at HeiGIT from my work for the OSMF. Should at any point in time a conflict of interest occur, I will directly report it to the OSMF and HeiGIT to resolve.

my next steps

Initially, I will prioritize fixing of bugs, publishing of updates and documenting of the status quo such that decisions about future changes can be made in an informed way. Working through the accumulated reported issues on GitHub will probably take a while.

After that I would like to focus on step-by-step improvements of the iD editor. This could include stuff like enhanced support for road lane tagging, lifecycle prefixes, opening hours, or productivity tools like a building or way improving mode.

I am open to feedback from the whole OSM community, so get in touch on iD’s issue tracker on github or through some of the many OSM communication channels (I will try to follow as many of them as possible). Of course code contributions from you are also very welcome!

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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. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

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Report by the OSMF microgrants committee on the trial run of microgrants

In 2020 the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) board funded 12 OpenStreetMap projects proposed by community members, groups and organisations. All the project proposals (funded or not) are visible on the OSM wiki and some of the 12 selected proposals were presented on the OSM blog. The program was overseen by the microgrants committee, whose composition was determined by the OSMF board. Initially, the program was set to fund 10 projects with a budget of up to 5000 Euros per project and for a maximum of 50.000 Euros. The policy framework can be read here.

Report by the OSMF Microgrants Committee

The trial run of the OSMF microgrants program has now ended. You can

read the detailed final report (.odt, 29 KB) by the Microgrants Committee, submitted in September 2021 to the board, and
see the presentation (.pdf, 53 KB) by Hanna Krüger (Microgrants Committee) during the September board meeting.

Project reports by grantees

Almost all projects have sent their final reports and you can read them on the OSM wiki. The respective project proposal is linked towards the top of each page.

More details

You can see the microgrants timeline here and find more details in the Microgrants Committee’s minutes until June 2020 and in the OSMF board minutes.

Future

The final report by the Microgrants Committee was sent recently, so at the time of writing there is no evaluation published by the board or a decision taken on whether there will be a second microgrants round.

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OSMF election 2021- How to become a board candidate

OpenStreetMap Foundation members will vote to elect a new board in December.

Who can become a board candidate

Any natural person may be elected to become a board member, provided that:

they have been a normal OSM Foundation member [1] (not an associate member [2]) during the full 180 days before the General Meeting (start date of normal membership before 14 June 2021), and
are willing to act as a board member, and
are permitted by law to do so.

[1] Normal members provide their full residential address and can vote on all issues. Their residential address may be disclosed to other members.
[2] Associate members provide just their country of residence - which may also be disclosed to other members - and can vote - but not on all issues. Additionally, they cannot be board candidates.

If you want to find out the type of your OpenStreetMap Foundation membership (normal or associate), please check the most recent approval/renewal membership email or email the volunteers of the Membership Working Group at membership@osmfoundation.org

Available seats in this election

The 2021 board election will have at least 4 board seats available: of M. Maron, A. R. McCann, A. Mustard and G. Rischard. The terms of T. Knerr, JM Liotier and E. A. Villar will continue.

Currently there are seven seats on the foundation board. Board members are volunteers.

What the board is/is not, rules and responsibilities and why run

Please read the links on the OSM wiki.

A lot of the foundation’s work is done by the volunteers of our working groups, and if you want to help the foundation, you can also look at joining those.

How to nominate yourself

Update: The self-nomination window has now closed. Thank you to everyone who put their name forward!

Self-nominations of board candidates will open on 16 October 2021 and you will be able to nominate yourself on this OpenStreetMap wiki page: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM21/Election_to_Board#Candidates

You can create an account on the OSM wiki here and you will be able to add your name to the table that will be added on that date by editing the page here (please wait until 16 October 2021 to do so).

Resources about the 2021 board election and Annual General Meeting

The main two pages that will have the information about the 2021 board election and Annual General Meeting are:

OSM wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM21/Election_to_Board and

OSMF website: https://www.osmfoundation.org/Annual_General_Meetings/2021

How you can help

A few of the current and past board members have mentioned that the thought of being a candidate did not cross their mind until it was suggested to them. So, you might want to think if you’d like to run for the board or to suggest being a candidate to others.

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Join the OSMF Engineering Working Group to support the OSM developer ecosystem

To support the development of open source software around OpenStreetMap, the OSM Foundation has recently launched the Engineering Working Group (EWG). The group intends to support open source software projects with direct funding, mentorship programs, and by offering a platform for coordination.

Why this working group?

OpenStreetMap relies on a vast ecosystem of open source software. This includes the tools used by mappers to understand and contribute data, the software powering our database servers and website, the libraries and frameworks used by developers to build consumer-facing applications around OSM data, and many of these applications themselves.

The development teams creating these software products are generally independent entities, separate from the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). This is by design: The OSM community values do-ocracy and decentralization, so the OSMF does not manage software projects. However, that does not mean there is no room for the OSMF to support this vital ecosystem!

What we do

The Engineering Working Group (EWG) is charged with

Handling software development paid for by the OSMF, including the distribution of grants. This will involve putting out calls for proposals on tasks of interest, and accepting proposals on other tasks.
Offering a platform for coordination of software development efforts across the OSM ecosystem. We want to encourage standardization and shared efforts between projects by bringing together developers with similar interests. This work also includes responding to emails and directing people at other people or appropriate resources.
Managing OSM’s participation in software mentorship programs such as Google Summer of Code, which help grow the OSM developer community.

For handling paid development, “tasks” include development of new features, maintenance of code, documentation, and other tasks that improve the developer experience. When we are ready to start providing grants, we will encourage applications from skilled individuals who aren’t professional developers, professional contractors or companies, as well as those who are.

The OSMF has previously supported software projects through microgrants as well as separately with funding for Nominatim, osm2pgsql, Potlatch 2 and iD. With EWG, this kind of support will be placed on a more solid foundation.

In our first round we will look for projects that don’t need much management and focus the bulk of our efforts on core software. Like with all work paid for by the OSMF, the principles of the Hiring Framework will apply.

Whom we seek

As a group that is just getting started, we’re eagerly looking for additional working group members.

We would particularly welcome people knowledgeable about technology used in key OSM systems, such as the rails port, Ruby on Rails in general, and the cgimap implementation of the main OSM API, as well as those who can help with knowledge domains, such as user interface design, which are not well covered by the existing members.

However, you do not need to know any particular technology to participate! So if you have experience with the OSM software ecosystem, developing software, or managing software development, consider joining us!

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Projects of the Czech OSM community

The following post was put together by several members of Czech OSM community, and the main contributor was Mikoláš Štrajt. OpenStreetMap Česká republika z.s. is one of the OSM Foundation Local Chapters.

OpenStreetMap Česká republika z.s. association was founded in 2018 with a primary aim to have a stable entity for ownership of already existing website of the local community on domains openstreetmap.cz and osmap.cz. Since 2020 the association acts as a local chapter of OpenStreetMap Foundation in the Czech Republic.

*Screenshot of https://openstreetmap.cz/* *Map data* *© OpenStreetMap contributors*

In the long term, we, as a Czech community, engage in the following mapping projects:

similarly to Slovakia, we are mapping a widespread network of tourist routes,
(not only) to its supervision we run a database of photos Fody, with a primary focus on tourist objects like guideposts, info boards, and maps,
we import some data from Český úřad zeměměřický a katastrální (Czech national mapping agency):
- automatically, address points (operated by poloha.net project),
- semi-automatically, buildings (from the RÚIAN database) and fields and meadows (from the LPIS database) using the JOSM plugin called Tracer,
we are updating post boxes according to open data by Česká pošta (Czech Post) and we report any discrepancy found,
as needed, we sometimes do collective edits. Recently, we have been for example improving the tags about recycling containers or controlling if we do not have telephone booths, which were cancelled the other day, hanging in the map.

Besides that, we

translate the WeeklyOSM into Czech,
organise the State of the Map CZ+SK conference (as part of wider OpenAlt conference or standalone action), and we are publishing video recordings of the speeches,
quarterly, call for a personal meeting of mappers – so-called “quarterly beer”,
organise mapathons,
clean up after vandals operating in the area of the Czech Republic, communicate with the newbies, state offices, and commercial subjects.

Members of our community operate their own projects, e.g.:

– MTB map – a map for mountain bike riders,
– tourist maps for Garmin, other Garmin maps,
– maps of the Czech Republic for applications based on the mapsforge library,
– POI importer used to easily import various datasets into OSM,
– Osmose backend for CZ,PL,DE,FI,DK,AT,
– Taginfo for the Czech Republic,
– OsmHiCheck – QA applications for hiking routes,
– Archive of extracts of OSM data for the Czech Republic with very old versions,
– Monthly generated map tiles for the Czech Republic starting 04.2006.

Talk-cz mailing list serves as the primary communication channel, which is supported by a jabber chat connected to a Matrix channel and our own section under the openstreetmap.org forum.

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OpenStreetMap RSS/Torrent functionality for planet files

OpenStreetMap is open data, available to all for free on https://planet.openstreetmap.org. We release six large files, totaling 428 GB every week. These files contain the complete OpenStreetMap data, including files with the full history of OSM.

To make it easier to share the load of downloading these files, we also supply BitTorrent files, which allow spreading the load across multiple web servers as well as using peer-to-peer file transfers.

mnalis has recently implemented RSS feeds which announce when the torrents come out. This allows users to automatically subscribe to sharing new planet files as they are produced, thus reducing the load on the planet.openstreetmap.org servers, which are bandwidth-limited.

More information is available on:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm#BitTorrent_RSS.2FAtom_feed

Operations Working Group, Mnalis

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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. The OSMF supports the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups, such as the Operations Working Group. Please consider becoming a member of the Foundation.

Activities of Local OSM Chapter in Slovakia

The following post was written by Freemap Slovakia, one of the OSM Foundation Local Chapters.

OpenStreetMap is represented in Slovakia by Freemap Slovakia (NGO Freemap) which was founded in 2009 and became recognized as Local OSM Chapter in 2021.

We have 13 regular and 4 registered members. Apart from the organized members, there are several hundred active mappers in Slovakia.

Over the time, we contributed to OSM in many ways and we continue to do so.

Community

General OSM discussion forum related to Slovakia

We maintain osm_sk google group, available to everyone, where all OSM contributors that deal with Slovakia in OSM are welcome to ask questions and discuss ideas.

Mapping Parties

Once, or twice a year we organize mapping parties, one of which serves as a meeting for our NGO. The parties are always held at different places in Slovakia.

Outdoor photograph of Freemap SK members, holding large "Freemap.sk" and "OpenStreetMap" banners.

Facebook

Our community page can be found here.

Data Imports

Buildings and Addresses

In an effort that has been going for several years we continuously perform supervised bulk import of buildings and addresses from the Cadastre of Real Estate of Slovakia. For this purpose we built a JOSM plugin that allows users to visually inspect batch-imported data and upload it subsequently into the OSM database.

Marked Hiking Trails

Slovakia is a mountainous country and has one of the most elaborate systems of marked hiking trails in the world with more than 100 years of history (shared with Czech Republic).

We cooperate with the Klub Slovenských Turistov (Association of Slovak Tourists) which maintains the physical trails and markings, to make sure all changes are captured in OSM as soon as possible.

Cycling Infrastructure

Slovakia enjoys steady growth of cycling infrastructure, both in physical means (e.g. dedicated cycling paths) and in terms of trail marking. We make sure the latest changes in the “physical world of Slovak cycling” are captured in the OSM database.

Rivers and streams

Rivers and streams are hard to be properly mapped by “survey”, therefore we imported most of the waterways from the Cadastre of Slovakia, open data sources of Slovak Cartography Office of Slovak Republic, INSPIRE dataset and recently from more precise Aerial Laser Scans of Terrain performed by the Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre Authority of the Slovak Republic.

Software & Hardware

Freemap.sk Web Portal

We develop and maintain web portal freemap.sk that provides a number of features:

serving our own map tiles
route finder
photo gallery
and many more

Source code of the portal, backend servers and many utility repositories are Open source.

Custom Map Styles and Renderers

Due to the specific appearance of the hiking trail marking in Slovakia, we developed several custom map styles which we also render and provide publicly as tiles.

Legacy Hiking Style

This raster map style was used for many years until we developed a more recent, hi-res “outdoor style”. Some people still consider this legacy style a pinnacle in terms of balance between colours, information and general aesthetics, and therefore the style is still available in the portal.

Recent Outdoor Style

A new hi-res raster map style has been in development since 2019, with a more “busy” appearance, as it displays hiking, cycling, cross-country skiing and horse riding marked trails all at once.

On more detailed zoom levels, we blend terrain profile into the map using data from the Aerial Laser Scans of Terrain.

The source code of the map style and renderer is freely available.

Photo Gallery

We empower users of freemap.sk to upload and view photos. Our photo gallery contains almost 300 000 photos, including more than 10 000 photos of hiking and cycling guideposts.

Rendering Maps and Hosting Tiles

We render our own map styles and expose the map tiles for public use. This way, anyone can easily use our raster map tiles in their websites, or smartphone apps.

We also provide offline vector maps for the Android smartphone app Locus and other devices:

Garmin Exports

Twice a week we export the freemap-style map into a format suitable for Garmin devices.

Other

Printed maps

We create custom vector maps for large prints on information boards. Freemap.sk users can also easily export their own raster maps in print quality through the Export Map feature.

Photo of an information board, which shows a map, photos and text.

OSM License Compliance

Maps generated from the OSM data are frequently used by various NGOs in Slovakia on information boards and printed maps. When we encounter OSM-based maps missing appropriate attribution, we communicate with creators of those maps to make sure the text is included. In almost all cases such the situation is caused by lack of knowledge and not by malicious intent and the problem is usually resolved by adding a sticker to the board containing the attribution text.

Awards

The Openstreetmap Foundation Greatness in mapping award was granted to our member Martin Ždila in 2016.

Funding

Our largest expenses are for hosting the freemap.sk portal and the map rendering servers. These costs are covered with income from annual fees paid by our members, by donations, and via the Slovak government-run 2% income tax donation schema.

Vision for Upcoming Years

In the near future we will be busy with the following:

we believe that as a community, we succeeded in creating the best outdoor map of Central Europe, with an unmatched level of detail, precision, and frequency of updates. We plan to continue in this effort
grow the OSM community in Slovakia and make the existing tools more accessible for non-English speaking mappers.
as mostly technology-centric group of people, we realize the need for recruiting new members, who could help us put a more human face on our effort through social media, or by organizing mapping-propagating events for lay people
continue importing data into the OSM database from datasets published by various Slovak government agencies. This also includes cleanup of data that was previously imported from less precise datasets.
work on further development of the freemap.sk web portal, the outdoor map style and a custom routing service, most likely based on GrapHopper
try to raise more funds, which would allow us to grow the area covered by our map even further

If you would like to contact us

Write us via osm_sk google group, or through Facebook page, or send us an email to freemap@freemap.sk

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Community survey on 2020 OSM Foundation board decisions and current topics

Would you like to provide feedback on decisions that the OSM Foundation board made in 2020 and on current topics? The board has prepared a survey and is asking for your input in order to set priorities.

You can see a copy of the questions in English here.

Languages

Thanks to volunteer translators, the survey is available in eighteen languages so far:

ar عربى (Arabic) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=ar
ckb (Kurdish Sorani) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=ckb
de Deutsch (German) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=de
en English (Base language): https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=en
es Español (Spanish) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=es
fa فارسی (Persian) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=fa (machine translation)
fr Français (French) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=fr
ja 日本語 (Japanese) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=ja
id Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=id
it Italiano (Italian) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=it
ko 한국어 (Korean) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=ko
pl Polski (Polish) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=pl
pt-BR Português do Brasil (Brazilian Portuguese) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=pt-BR
ru Pусский (Russian) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=ru
tr Türkçe (Turkish) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=tr (machine translated until ~ 2021-01-22. Checked by native speaker and updated afterwards)
uk Yкраїнська (Ukranian) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=uk
vi Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=vi
zh-Hant-TW 繁體中文（台灣) (Traditional Chinese – Taiwan) https://osmf.limequery.org/281662?lang=zh-Hant-TW

Helping with translations

If you would like to provide a translation to a language not on the list, or to suggest a correction in one of the translations, please email allan@mustard.net

If you would like to help with translations of non-English answers to English, future surveys or blogposts, please send an email to communication@osmfoundation.org with subject: Helping with translations in [language].

Practical

You need to provide an email address (to receive a token) and solve an equation in order to access the survey.
There are 18 questions, most are multiple-choice and mandatory.
There is an optional section with demographic questions.
There are several sections. You cannot go back to the previous section but you can resume later.
Please note that pages with background information linked from the survey are in English.
- If the pages are on the OSM wiki, you are welcome to translate them.
- If they are on the OSMF website and you would like to provide translations, please email the Communication Working Group at communication@osmfoundation.org with subject: Translating OSMF pages in [language].

Feedback

There is discussion about the survey on the “talk” mailing list, where you are welcome to provide feedback. You can register to the talk mailing list here. All past messages of the list are available here.

Privacy

Read the LimeSurvey privacy policy.
The answers can be accessed by current board members and the administrative assistant and will be processed by the board.
The email addresses and names (if provided) of participants won’t be published after the survey ends.

Results

The general results will be published after the survey ends. Past surveys are listed here.

Deadline for participation: 14 February 2021.

Even if you don’t participate, it would be appreciated if you spread the word about the survey.

Thank you in advance 🙂

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. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Please consider becoming a member of the Foundation.

Active OSM contributor? You can now easily join the OpenStreetMap Foundation

Deutsch Français Galego Polski Nederlands Русский

*Map data by OpenStreetMap Contributors.* *Official OSM logo by Ken Vermette, CC-BY-SA 3.0 & trademarks apply. Image by D.Kazazi CC BY-SA 2.0*

If you contribute significantly to the OpenStreetMap project you should have a voice in the OpenStreetMap Foundation, which is supporting the project, and be able to vote for the board members of your choice. There is now an easier and costless way to become an OpenStreetMap Foundation member:

The volunteers of the OSMF Membership Working Group have just implemented the active contributor membership program, where you can easily apply to become an Associate member of the Foundation and there is no need to pay the membership fee.

What can I do as an OSMF Associate member?

You can vote for the board candidates of your choice at the board elections.
You can vote on some issues during General Meetings (but not all).
You can participate in the discussions between members on the OSMF members mailing list (if you are already an OSMF member register here – see the archive available to all).
- Subscription to the mailing list is optional.
- You have the option to receive a single daily digest, containing all the emails of the day.
- Feel free to email in your language 🙂
You can proudly say that you are an OSMF member 🙂

How does it work?

We will automatically grant associate memberships to mappers who request it and who have contributed at least 42 calendar days in the last year (365 days).

Not everyone contributes by mapping, and some of the most familiar names in our members list barely map. Some are very involved, for example, in organizing conferences. Those other forms of contribution should be recognised as well. If you do not map at all or less than the 42 days, then we expect you to write a paragraph or two about what you do for OpenStreetMap. The Board will then vote on your application.

How can I find out how many mapping days I have?

You can get an estimate from tools like Pascal Neis How did you contribute, which should be accurate enough for most purposes.
If you are technically versed and wish to verify your mapping days yourself, use the changesets API of OSM to query your changesets. Then you can collect all unique dates in the created_at attributes of the changesets, and count how many unique days you have in the last 365 days.

I would like to become a member via the active contributor program!

● If you qualify based on mapping activity (at least 42 mapping days in the last 365 days) please fill out this form to get your active contributor membership

● If you qualify for other contributions to OpenStreetMap please fill out this form and describe your activities to get your active contributor membership.

General link:
https://join.osmfoundation.org/active-contributor-membership/

Frequently asked questions

What do I need to supply?

Your name.
Your OSM username.
Your country of residence.
Your email address (where ballots for voting will be sent and will be the email address associated with participation in the OSMF members mailing list, if you choose to subscribe)

How long is this membership valid?

Just like paid membership, membership under the membership fee waiver programme must be renewed annually. You will get a reminder, and you then can request the renewal, similar to the initial application. The check for mapping at least 42 calendar days in the last year will be carried out at the time you request the renewal, or alternatively you submit again a paragraph or two about what you do for OpenStreetMap.

What else do I need to know?

By law, every member of the OSMF can inspect the membership register (we ask for the purpose before handing it out and generally distribution by the recipient is not allowed). Who joined under which program is not revealed. The name, country, email and one of the OSM account names will be shown.

Why does this active contributor membership program exist?

By inviting more active community members to join the OSMF, we become more resilient against take-over attempts through massive signups. We believe that even mappers for whom £15 is not a lot of money would be more willing to join, if they are invited to a free membership due to their good work. Also, active contribution to the project is easier to assess than financial hardship and does not require the applicant to disclose personal information. The potential loss of individual membership fee income is not a threat to our financial stability. In fact, there are quite a few members who like to donate more than just £15. Those donations need not be tied to any membership.

Why 42 mapping days?

Mapping days is not perfect, but we need a benchmark that is objective, easy to verify, and simple for us to measure and implement.
Why 42 days? If we measure contributions in mapping days by OSMF members who map (83%), roughly half of them map more than 42 days per year. We would expect a “slightly exceptional” contribution in terms of mapping days.

How are my changes divided into days for measuring 42 mapping days

For measuring the mapping days, the created at time stamp of each changeset is used. Typically, all changes in a change set have the same time stamp. A day is defined in UTC from midnight to midnight.

Does paid mapping count?

The “active contributor program” is there to measure your engagement towards the project. In the first place, we think this is shown by volunteer activities for the project. If you do organizing or mapping for OSM as a part of your paid job, that is not necessarily a show of engagement with the project. By default, we would not include these activities as qualifying for this type of membership. But feel free to explain your contributions, and the Board will have a vote.

Can’t this be cheated?

We also discussed abuse. When we receive an application, we contact the mentioned OpenStreetMap account(s) through the OSM messaging system to confirm they are owned by the applicant. You could of course make tiny contributions like wiggling a single node on 60 days, and maybe go undetected and get your membership. But that would be fraud, and the membership could be revoked if the OSMF Membership Working Group finds out that the contributions are not meaningful.

What happens to the old fee waiver program?

The Active contributor membership program is replacing the old “fee waiver” program (active from 2018 January onward) where the membership fee was waived in cases of financial hardship or lack of suitable money transfer ability. The change was made possible by a vote during the 2019 Annual General Meeting. The “financial hardship” and “Lack of suitable money transfer” rule will be dropped entirely because even today, we expect someone joining under those rules to demonstrate some sort of contribution, so they would likely be eligible under the new rule as well.

What other options do I have to become a member?

As previously, you can still become a Normal member or Associate member of the Foundation by paying the annual £15 membership fee.

The main differences between Normal and Associate members are that:

Normal members have to supply their full residential address.
Normal members can vote on all issues during the General Meetings, while Associate members only on some issues.
Normal members can be board candidates and hence become board members.

You can switch your membership type. Please contact the Membership Working Group (email below) for more information.

Membership Working Group logo based on the official OSM logo by Ken Vermette, CC-BY-SA 3.0 & trademarks apply. Figures by Pascal Neis, reproduced with permission.

I would like to help the volunteers of the OSMF Membership Working Group!

Thank you 🙂 We need your help and you can make a difference by joining the Working Group. Send us an email at membership@osmfoundation.org

As a MWG member you can help us to:

Administer the membership register.
Answer routine questions like what kind of membership does someone have (normal or associate) or when will they need to renew.
Help with the manual work for matching bank transfers with memberships for new sign ups and renewals.
Sort out other problems regarding sign up or renewal.If you join, you can be as involved as you like.

I have another question!

Feel free to contact us at membership@osmfoundation.org

Cute half-blobs with eyes, holding sticks with maps. — *Image by Tintao CC BY-SA 2.0, modified.*

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Celebrate the 16th OSM anniversary!

*The 16th OpenStreetMap anniversary will be celebrated on the 8th of August, 2020!* *Image*: *Fictional map data rendered with the standard style of osm.org (osm-carto). CC-BY-SA 3.0, trademarks apply.*

On Saturday, 8th of August 2020,
we will celebrate 16 years of OpenStreetMap!

Planning an online party or mapathon?

You can use the BigBlueButton video server of the OpenStreetMap Foundation! To get a free account and your own video room, please signup.

You can use your video room even after the birthday, for any OSM-related event.
Community members in low-bandwidth environments may benefit from using BigBlueButton’s low-bandwidth settings.
Please add your event to the OSM wiki! If wiki editing isn’t your thing, email communication@osmfoundation.org with your event details and we’ll add it 🙂

Other ideas

Post why you love OpenStreetMap. We will publish a collection of messages later 🙂
Post a photo of yourself holding a written message 🙂
Use the hashtag #OpenStreetMap16 on social media
Make/order a birthday cake. See previous examples of OSM cakes for inspiration. Don’t forget the attribution!
If your photos are accompanied with the text “CC-BY-SA 2.0” (or another open license), we can add them to the OSM wiki (or feel free to add them yourself! ~ register here).
Do you have more ideas? Share them in the comments 🙂

Join us!

Observance of the anniversary of the creation of OpenStreetMap is held on or about the 9th of August, which is the anniversary of the registration of the OpenStreetMap.org domain name. The concept of OpenStreetMap predates the domain name registration, but that seems a suitable anniversary date 🙂

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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. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Please consider becoming a member of the Foundation.

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is a 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.