Category Archives: OSMF

Posts about organisation of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. Working groups, the board, and other entities, and how we structure our organisation

Apply to be the OSM Core Software Development Facilitator

The OSM Foundation has recently received investment from the Sovereign Tech Fund to ensure the stability, growth and modernization of OpenStreetMap’s core software. In this context we are looking for a OSM core software development facilitator who will help the growing team of developers of the OpenStreetMap core software to coordinate and organise their work.

Please submit your application to the OSM Foundation Personnel Committee at pc@osmfoundation.org. Include CV, cover letter, and/or examples of work as attachments. Applications will be accepted until January 21, 2025.

In the role of facilitator, you will help the developers with prioritising and organising the work around the software development for the core OpenStreetMap database infrastructure. The work is mainly centered around the openstreetmap-website project and its C++ implementation openstreetmap-cgimap but also includes smaller “satellite” projects for providing data dumps and updates.

Your role is to organise communication with the OSM community to ensure visibility on the development work and to establish a space for the community to contribute productively. You will be responsible for managing the budget assigned to core development work. In that you will work closely with the OSMF Engineering Working Group and regularly report to the OSMF board.

Scope of work / responsibilities

The facilitator plans, coordinates and contributes to

  • taking stock of the current state of the core OSM software stack, state of development, current issues and possible future developments
  • clarifying together with developers what expectations for contributions are and ensuring accessible documentation
  • developing a light-weight roadmap plan as guideline for current and future contributors
  • creating a space for volunteers from the developing and general community to contribute productively
  • identification of areas where paid support can assist the volunteer developers
  • hiring and supervising of one or more persons to take on a supportive maintainer role
  • communication within the group of developers, with developers and maintainers from interrelated software projects, the OSMF and the OSM community at large

The facilitator will be expected to take a leading role in shaping these tasks in close collaboration with the existing maintainers and developers, to ensure a modus operandi that works for all involved.

Profile

The successful candidates should have prior experience in management in an engineering project. Ideally they have also some experience with

  • participating in open source projects, as developers and/or in a managing role
  • mentoring other developers and working with volunteers
  • working with OpenStreetMap and its community

Good communication skills are essential and you should enjoy working with developers with many different backgrounds. You should be able to work independently and self-directed and be able to shape your own role within a group of highly motivated and engaged volunteers.

Employment/contracting structure

Location: 100% Remote

The STF project is expected to start in January 2025.

The facilitator position will be a contractor position and is funded for 2 years with a total budget of 175 working days. We expect the facilitator to be more active in the first year, when they get to know the team and projects. At the end of the funding period, the OSMF will evaluate the impact and benefit of the facilitator position and may decide to continue funding the role.

The person will work from their premises, and determine their own schedule. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a global organisation; working with people in different time zones and handling related scheduling constraints is expected.

Sovereign Tech Fund Invests in OpenStreetMap

We are thrilled to announce that the OpenStreetMap Foundation has been selected by the Sovereign Tech Agency for a service agreement in the amount of 384,000 EUR over two years to ensure the stability, growth and modernization of OpenStreetMap’s core software.

The Sovereign Tech Fund — a program of the newly established Sovereign Tech Agency — invests in the development, improvement, and maintenance of open digital base technologies worldwide. OpenStreetMap is a global, collaborative, open source intiative, providing vital geospatial data for public use, private sector services, humanitarian response, and an incredible number of diverse applications. OSM has become the global infrastructure for digital map data.

The commissioned work will focus on updating and modernizing code to current standards, and enhancing volunteer contributions through improved documentation and testing infrastructure. It will also identify ways OSM’s core infrastructure can improve, including forward-looking research in topics potentially like responding to vandalism and new ways to interact with OSM data.

As a result of this contract, OSMF will be creating two new roles. The first role to be recruited will be the OSM Core Software Development Facilitator. They will help the growing team of developers of the OpenStreetMap core software to coordinate and organise their work, establish a space for the community to contribute productively, and ensure good communication across the community.

Watch this space for a job position in early January and consider applying or sharing it with a good candidate.

The OSMF board is grateful to the Sovereign Tech Agency for their investment at a critical moment of growth for OpenStreetMap.

Meta Contributes to 178K EUR to OpenStreetMap

The OpenStreetMap Foundation Board is excited to announce Meta has made a major contribution of 178,710 Euros to support the OpenStreetMap community and core infrastructure. This critical funding is directed to OSM operations and infrastructure, and helping to bring the OSM community together around the world.

The major part of these funds will be directed to meet growing user and data demand, and improve our technical infrastructure and software development. A portion of the funds have already been deployed to sponsor the global State of the Map in Nairobi, and over a half dozen regional and local OSM events around the world. And Meta steps up to a Platinum Corporate Membership, a commitment to OSM in the years ahead.

Meta contributes and participates in OSM in multifaceted ways. Their editors have had particular focus on detecting and fixing errors and vandalism. Meta develops the Rapid editor to enable human-in-the-loop AI assisted mapping. Meta’s Mapillary platform has collected and made available street level imagery for OSM for years, a super valuable resource for mapping. Recently, Meta has focused on pedestrian mapping, engaging the OSM community to improving data like sidewalks and crosswalks.

The OSMF Board is grateful for Meta’s donation and the many contributions to OpenStreetMap.

The OSMF welcomes in-kind support, as well as financial support for OSM’s technical development, operations, and community:

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 a very small core staff are the primary support for the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

2024 OSMF Board Election – Online voting is open until 19 October 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.

This weekend take the opportunity to read the board candidates’ answers and manifestos and vote in the 2024 OSM Foundation Board election!

The OpaVote voting emails will be sent to eligible OSM Foundation members this Saturday 12 October 2024, after 16:00 UTC and will 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 19 October 2024), and
  • your membership is not in arrears 7 days before the date of the Annual General Meeting, and
  • you are a natural person.


OpaVote email

The email from the OpaVote online voting platform will be sent to the email address associated with your OSM Foundation membership, and

  • the subject of the email will be: [OpenStreetMap Foundation] Vote for 2024 Board Elections [some_random_letters],
  • the sender will be: noreply@opavote.com

If you believe you should have received a voting email but can’t find it by Sunday, 13 October, please check your spam folder. If it’s still missing, send a message to the email address mentioned here.


Voting information and answers to frequent questions

You can find more information about voting and answers to frequently asked questions on this page.

Please make sure to read the warning on the page before voting.


Deadline for voting: Saturday 19 October at 16:00 UTC

The polls will remain accessible for one week, closing on Saturday 19 October 2024 at 16:00 UTC, when the Annual General Meeting 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.

Get notified about new blog posts: Subscribe to the English RSS feed (feeds also available for other languages)

OSMF board election 2024 – Submission of self-nominations is open until 13 August 2024, 23:59:59 UTC

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

Submission of self-nominations for the 2024 OSM Foundation board election is open. At least four of the seven board seats are available. Board members are volunteers and typically serve for two years until their seat is up for re-election.

You can put yourself forward as a board candidate by adding your information to the OSM wiki.

Submission of questions to candidates

Community members can submit questions to the candidates here, until 24 August 2024 at 23:59:59 UTC. The official set of questions, which candidates will be asked to answer, will be based on the questions from the community and previous years. The facilitator for the questioning process this year, selected by the board, is Brian Sperlongano.

Resources regarding the 2024 board election and the 18th Annual General Meeting

For more information regarding the 2024 board election and the 18th Annual General Meeting, please see the following links:

Key dates

  • List on the OSM wiki.
  • Monthly view – Please check the description of each event for exact dates and times — the OSM wiki is the authoritative source.

How you can help

Besides asking questions and voting, 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 propose being a candidate to others.

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

Get notified about new blog posts: Subscribe to the English RSS feed (feeds also available for different languages)

OSM Foundation board election 2024 – How to become a board candidate

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


OpenStreetMap Foundation members will vote to elect a new board in October. There will be four seats available: of Arnalie Vicario, Craig Allan, Mateusz Konieczny and Sarah Hoffmann, whose board terms are ending. The terms of Dani Waltersdorfer, Guillaume Rischard and Roland Olbricht will continue. There are seven seats on the foundation board and board members are volunteers.

Self-nominations of board candidates will open on 28 July 2024 and you will be able to nominate yourself on this OpenStreetMap wiki page: https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM2024/Election_to_Board#List_of_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 28 July 2024 to do so). Self-nominations will close on the 13th of August at 23:59 UTC.

Election timeline

The timeline of the election is here: https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM2024/Election_to_Board#Key_dates

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.

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] or an associate member [2] during the full 180 days before the General Meeting, which will take place on 19 October 2024, and
  • have been a normal member for the full 28 days prior to the General Meeting, 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 from the email account associated with your OSM Foundation membership. Please see the OSM wiki regarding changing your membership type.

Resources about the 2024 board election and Annual General Meeting

The main two pages that have the information about the 2024 board election and Annual General Meeting are:

Resolutions proposed by OSM Foundation members

OSM Foundation members can submit resolutions and ask the membership to vote on them. The resolutions need to be supported by at least 5% of members eligible to vote, in order to be added to the ballots. Please read: Companies Act 2006: Members’ power to require circulation of written resolution. The deadline for providing the supported resolutions will be the 24th of August.

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.

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

Get notified about new blog posts: Subscribe to the RSS feed

OpenStreetMap at the UNMaps Conference 2024

OpenStreetMap foundation board member Sarah Hoffmann recently joined the 3rd annual UNMaps conference in Valencia, Spain to present about the OpenStreetMap project and participate in a panel discussion about crowd-sourced geodata.

The UNMaps conference brings together the GIS experts from the different entities of the UN, which was about a hundred participants in 2024. There were representatives from the UN secretariat, the different UN entities, like UNICEF and the International Criminal Court (ICC), and people from the UN peacekeeping missions. They also regularly invite external partners and contributors to present their work and join the discussions. Given the vital role that OSM already plays in their work, they asked the OSMF board to join the conference and represent the OpenStreetMap community. Also invited from the wider OSM community were the researchers from HeiGIT and the humanitarian mappers from HOT.

“It wasn’t necessary to explain to anyone who we are,” noted Sarah, “OpenStreetMap is well known and used on a daily basis within the UN. The maps produced by the UNMaps division for use within the UN heavily use OSM data, mainly replacing boundaries and names to follow the official policies of the UN.”

“Crowdsourcing Geospatial Information” Panelists from left to right: (host) Michael Montani (UNMappers; (panelists)
Benjamin Herfort (HeiGIT), Sarah Hoffmann (OSMF), Sam Colchester (HOT).

In many areas where the different UN entities operate, OSM is the best (and sometimes only) available source for geographic data. Thus, base maps using OpenStreetMap data were featured in almost every presentation. And it doesn’t stop there. UN users also contribute back to improve and complete the map in the areas where they use it, and the UN Mappers community supports the UN with organised mapping activities.

Sarah answered questions about OSM and OSM operations, including a lively discussion about iD editor as a response to the question: how do we deal with errors in the map data? In addition, Sarah joined a panel discussion on crowd-sourced data focussing on the questions of data quality and the importance of local knowledge in map data.

The discussions continued in the hallways, as well. Sarah noted that there were informal conversations about what kind of data is suitable for OSM and how to best connect with the community, as well as about what it’s like to be part of a world-wide community in peaceful cooperation to achieve a common goal.

“The conference was a great opportunity for getting to know each other,” said Sarah, “seeing OpenStreetMap data used so much in the daily operations of the UN is a great reminder how much our project has grown and how essential our data has become for so many different activities.”

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

A progress update on vector tiles from the Engineering Working Group

The OpenStreetMap Foundation’s Engineering Working Group has an update on the effort to create vector tiles for openstreetmap.org. Read on for why this work is important, what’s been done so far and how they are incorporating community feedback, and the technical details for those who want to know more.

The background

Currently, the openstreetmap.org website serves raster tiles, which are image tiles made up of pixels — think a downloaded image of part of a map. But the effort has begun to create vector tiles for the site, which will help improve how the map looks and how it works. You can read more about the background of the project here. 

Vector tiles serve up maps as vectors: points, lines and polygons. They store geographic data (like what makes up OpenStreetMap) in a format that allows for dynamic styling and interactivity. For users, vector tiles will mean a new, modern-looking map style with seamless zoom on openstreetmap.org, the map can be updated more quickly when data changes, and it should perform better for users.

Looking further ahead, the most exciting part is what this vector tile project will make easy for volunteers and tile users: 3D maps, more efficient data mixing and matching and integration of other datasets, thematic styles, multilingual maps, different views for administrative boundaries, interactive points of interest, more accessible maps for vision-impaired users, and surely many other ideas that no one has come up with yet. You may recall that many of these have been long-term interests for people in the OSM community.

The plan

The goal of vector tiles project is to provide a vector tiles setup that can work for openstreetmap.org — that is, a worldwide, complex basemap site in heavy demand from users and services around the world, where the data underlying the map changes all the time.

Or to put it technically, to create a setup for a worldwide complex basemap under high load which requires minutely updates.

Paul Norman is leading the vector tiles project.

He is working on adding to his Tilekiln project which generates vector tiles from a PostgreSQL database (like OpenStreetMap’s), making use of the Shortbread schema, which is a data format for how to name layers & properties within a vector tile, and improving Themepark, which allows one to add OSM data to a Postgres database.

The work is split up into three steps: 

1. First round of Tilekiln improvements and Shortbread Themepark improvements

2. Parallelism improvements

3. Shortbread publicly available in production

The first two steps are nearly done. Tilekiln now generates tiles in parallel, making it practical to generate tiles for the entire world. The next step is to start the deployment into OSMF hardware to prepare for production. 

Technical details on step 1

For those interested in the technical details of what’s being worked on, there are five main components of the first step above.

        1.        Automated packaging of Tilekiln

        2.        Tilekiln metrics being published with a Prometheus exporter

        3.        Themepark Shortbread reviewed

        4.        A demo server running with minutely updates of Shortbread tiles, rendering tiles on-demand

        5.        Demo shown to community

Items 1 and 2 are complete without need of further discussion. For item 3, Paul found that the osm2pgsql Themepark Shortbread implementation needed more work than anticipated as it was missing a layer and had some issues. 

Item 4 and 5 are complete. Paul’s demo server is running with minutely updates and the hardware requirements are more modest than expected. 

The community has also been providing useful feedback, such as on Paul’s OSM Community Forum post.

The community offered a lot of suggestions, some of which have already been incorporated. The remaining, in-scope issues from the community are: Curved lines rendering as jagged and vector tiles being too large.

The jagged lines issue is due to how smooth curves are represented in vector tiles. It has mostly been addressed but similar issues are expected to crop up in the future. A target scale equivalent to the minimum scale of the standard tile layer has been set. Zooming in to an even lower scale is possible, but artifacts may start to appear.

Vector tile size will continue to be an issue that needs continual work, but the current tiles are particularly large. Since this part of the testing some changes have been made that cut the size in half. Tile size optimization will be an issue that needs ongoing work, as tile size is the biggest factor in user experience.

The tiles being produced are usable, but more work remains to be done. Now that the parallelism work is complete it’s possible to generate large sets of tiles in order to test, so Paul will be returning to working on the tile definitions to improve tile size and fix some remaining issues, but the current  tiles are usable.

Background on the tools being used

Here is some information on the various tools used for this project.

Tilekiln is software written by Paul Norman for generating vector tiles from a PostgreSQL database. Alternatives are martin (or maybe t_rex). Tilekiln is in new development, although it uses a lot of standard PostgreSQL features to generate the vector tile data. Most OSM based maps (incl. osm-carto on osm.org) are generated from SQL database queries from a PostgreSQL database. Tilekiln generates vector tiles from similar queries. Tilekiln is new.

Themepark is part of the osm2pgsql suite of tools, to allow one to add OSM data to postgres, and share those processing steps between other projects. Many PostgreSQL based OSM map styles (like osm-carto) use osm2pgsql 

osm2pgsql has been around for 15+ years in OSM, and is used in many many places. Although Paul has contributed code to it, he is not the main developer. osm2pgsql has gotten more advanced, and better, in the last few years. Part of the power is pre-processing the data, and Themepark is an attempt to make these pre-processing steps easier.

Shortbread is a “vector tile schema” created by Geofabrik. It’s a data format for how to name layers & properties within a vector tile.

This blog posts contains contributions from Adam Hoyle, Mikel Maron, Amanda McCann, Paul Norman, and Andrew Wiseman

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.

Highlights from the OSMF Board Spring 2024 Meeting

The OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) Board of Directors recently convened for a Face-to-Face (F2F) strategy meeting, and we wanted to provide you all with an update!

We met on April 27th and 28th in Frankfurt in person, and for some of us, it was our first time ever meeting in person.

The meeting allowed us to discuss and refine strategies, foster deeper connections, and become more effective in serving the OSM community. By coming together in person, we were able to cultivate a deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives, refine our communication strategies, and focus on the most pressing priorities facing the OSMF.

Over the busy weekend, we were fortunate to have the guidance of our trusted facilitator, Gunner, who helped us navigate through discussions and prioritize our action items. He helped us communicate better, refocus on what really matters, and prioritize our many tasks and goals. With his guidance, we were able to make the most out of our time together and tackle important issues head-on. With his support, we not only stimulated our internal operations but also laid a solid foundation for more effective engagement with the OSM Community.

By coming together, we were able to address challenges more efficiently, brainstorm innovative solutions, and lay the groundwork for future initiatives. As we move forward, the Board is excited and motivated to share the progress of our action items with the community. While some of these initiatives will yield results in the short term, others may require more time to fully come to fruition. Nevertheless, we are committed to transparency and accountability, and we look forward to celebrating our achievements together with you all, the community.

You read more about some of our discussions and actions from the meeting on the OSMF website (here).

We’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity to meet F2F and strengthen our bonds. And we’re not stopping here! Looking ahead, we are eagerly anticipating our next in-person engagement at this year’s State of the Map in Nairobi. This event will provide another invaluable opportunity for us to connect with each other, and most importantly with members of the OSM community, exchange ideas, and continue our collaborative efforts to make OpenStreetMap the best it can be.

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.

Three Great Reasons to Join the OSM Foundation as a Member

Here are three reasons why April is a great month to join the OpenStreetMap foundation as a member.

1. As a a member you can self-nominate to serve as a member of the OSMF Board. This allows you to influence the strategic plan, some of OSM’s finances and other matters that directly affect the direction of OpenStreetMap’s future.

This year’s OSMF General Meeting and board elections are 19 October 2024. This means that if you want to run for the Board you must become a member of the Foundation by 22 April 2024 There are FOUR Board positions up for election next fall. Even if you’re not sure that you want to run for the Board, but you think you might be interested, you should join!

2. If you are a member of the OSM foundation at least 90 days before the Annual General Meeting, you can vote in the annual Board elections, as well as on other foundation initiatives. The details on types of membership are here. Importantly, if you are an ‘active contributor’ you can apply for a free membership.

3. To help us grow and diversify the OSM Membership worldwide.

As you can see from this blog post, we are in the midst of a worldwide campaign to increase the number of OSM foundation members from all parts of the world. Right now, representation amongst OSM members is skewed toward the US and northern Europe, whereas there are many thousands of OSM contributors all over the world. By joining as a member, you can make the voices of the communities heard.

OSMF Board member Arnalie Vicario has been posting testimonials from current members on her X (and other accounts.). Here’s a video from Daniel Akor from OpenStreetMap Nigeria:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1775364652974940317

Become an OpenStreetMap foundation member today!

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