OpenStreetMap was selected as the winner of the Free Software Foundation 2018 Award for Projects of Social Benefit. FSF founder and president Richard Stallman – who presented the award during the LibrePlanet 2019 conference in Cambridge, MA – mentioned that:
“it has been clear for decades that map data are important. Therefore we need a free collection of map data. The name OpenStreetMap doesn’t say so explicitly, but its map data is free. It is the free replacement that the Free World needs.”
The award was a custom-made piece of art: a golden-looking record that had on its label the four reasons why OpenStreetMap was nominated. It was accepted on behalf of the OpenStreetMap community by Kate Chapman, who went on to thank the Free Software Foundation and the large community of OpenStreetMap contributors. Kate is the chairperson of the OpenStreetMap Foundation – which supports the OpenStreetMap project – and she presented some key milestones of the project during her Sunday talk
“The FSF’s Award for Projects of Social Benefit honors projects that have taken the ideals of the free software movement and applied them to intentionally and significantly benefit society in other aspects of life. OpenStreetMap’s use of free software, freely shared data, and international grassroots collaboration has massively benefited not only the daily lives of individuals around the world but also saved lives through humanitarian uses like improved disaster response. We all owe OpenStreetMap contributors a debt of gratitude, and the FSF is happy to show our appreciation through this award”, said FSF executive director John Sullivan.
Thanks to all those who contribute to the OpenStreetMap project – the award belongs to you!
2019-03-30 The post was updated to reflect that the award had on its label the four reasons why OpenStreetMap was nominated, and not the Free Software’s Four Freedoms, as initially mentioned.
What is OpenStreetMap 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, such as ambulance services, fire brigades and humanitarian crises response.
What is the OpenStreetMap Foundation The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK 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.
What is the Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promoting computer users’ right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software — particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants — and free documentation for free software.
What is LibrePlanet LibrePlanet is an annual conference hosted by the Free Software Foundation for free software enthusiasts and anyone who cares about the intersection of technology and social justice. LibrePlanet brings together software developers, law and policy experts,activists, students, and computer users to learn skills, celebrate free software accomplishments, and face challenges to software freedom.
A day of protests will take place in more than 30 cities all over Europe on 23 March. Please join a demonstration! Locations and dates.
The German OpenStreetMap community explains below the possible impacts of Article 13 of the new EU Copyright Directive on OpenStreetMap. Source: https://www.openstreetmap.de/uf/en.html (with minor modifications)
On 26 March 2019, the European Parliament will vote for a third time on the new EU Copyright Directive. Article 13 of the new directive will de-facto force content platforms to filter uploaded contributions by their users. If a platform does not prevent uploading of copyright-protected content in accordance with “high industry standards of professional diligence” (i.e. upload filters), the operator of the platform is liable for copyright violations of their users. The new rules can be met by the large platforms, such as Google, Youtube and Facebook. Small, independent and free platforms like OpenStreetMap would be forced to introduce such filters or face catastrophic liability. This threatens our project.
The European Parliament passed the bill on 12 September 2018 despite noticeable civil society protest. Since then, the European Commission, the Council of Europe and representatives of the parliament, negotiated a compromise. It is expected that the parliament will vote on the compromise in the last week of March. We think that passing the bill would harm the OpenStreetMap and many other small and medium-sized platforms – regardless of whether they are commercial or not. If OpenStreetMap had to invest more resources on pre-filtering content than on anything else, the project would be a shadow of its former self. If nothing changes, a dark future awaits us.
The OpenStreetMap Foundation,FOSSGIS e.V. – the official local chapter in Germany – and OpenStreetMap France – the official local chapter in France – campaign for free map data. We usually do so in financial and technical matters but sometimes we are forced to become active in politics to defend the project.
But the directive does not mention upload filters, does it?
The term is not used in the current version of the draft. But operators of platforms will be liable for copyright violations of their users if they do not meet the following conditions:
They must have made “best efforts” to get a licence to use the uploaded content.
They must have made best efforts to ensure that their platform does not publish content if copyright holders have provided them with the necessary information.
If they are informed about a copyright violation, they have to remove the content, or disable access to them, immediately.
Until now, platforms were excepted from strict liability if they reacted immediately to a notification of a copyright violation. This new directive would force platforms to use either upload filters or review all contributions manually. Upload filters are the “high industry standard of professional diligence”. For example, Google uses them on Youtube.
What’s the problem with upload filters?
Upload filters have a
number of issues for small and medium sized and/or free and independent
platforms like OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia:
These filters do not work as reliably as required. Even now, and definitely under the new directive, they tend to be too zealous, by erring on the side of caution and excluding more than they should.
The operators of small and medium sized platforms will be forced to purchase the filter technology from large companies to keep up with the current state of filtering technology. This gives more power, and money, to large companies, centralising their power even more.
The rules will affect any website where users can upload copyrighted content. These are not only social networks but blogs with comments and forums as well. Small and new platforms lack the required financial resources to buy the filters. They will be exempted from the first and second condition (attempt to get a license and prevent uploads of copyrighted contents) if their annual turnover is below EUR 10 million and they are less than 3 years old. But three years is a short time. If the number of users exceeds 5 million, condition 3 (prevent re-upload of illegal content) must be met.
The directive aims to oppose the business model of big US companies. Indeed, the business model of Google and others is not always well aligned with public interests, but the directive will harm small and medium sized competitors, not the large ones.
Why do upload filters harm OpenStreetMap?
The OpenStreetMap project emphasises openness. Map changes by all users, new and experienced, are applied immediately and are provided to all other data processors immediately. The map is always as up to date as possible.
Upload filters are very impracticable for multiple reasons:
OpenStreetMap records the reality as it is. Other map data providers do the same. If OpenStreetMap compared the submissions with other datasets, many false positives would occur. Our data is if it is correct, very similar to the data of other map providers. A road in OpenStreetMap has the same curves, the same name, the same speed limit.
If a user uploads changes which are rejected by a filter, these changes have to be rejected as soon as possible. This requires the time of our volunteers, who would like to improve the map rather than checking whether a filter returned a false positive.
If a rejected contribution and a contribution of another user edit the same object in the database, a editing conflict occurs. They cannot be solved automatically because our world is too complex. Some conflicts are not that obvious: If two users add the same recently erected building, the two of them create a new object. In reality, this is a building recorded twice in our data.
If an edit by a new contributor is rejected by the filter although the edit is fine, the contributor becomes demotivated due to a lack of positive feedback.
The development, setup and optimisation of the filter requires a large amount of work from our volunteer software developers. Maybe we will have to spend money to purchase services. Both the work of our volunteers and the donations and membership fees are precious limited resources which can be better spent elsewhere to take our project forward.
There is an exception for Wikipedia, isn’t there?
It is not clear whether the “Wikipedia exemption” would be valid for OSM and even Wikipedia does not feel confident: María Sefidari Huici, member of the board of Wikimedia Foundation, calls the proposed changes a threat for the living and free internet. The Wikimedia Foundation, the organisation behind Wikipedia, doubts that this exemption satisfies their requirements. We share these doubts.
The directive has to be implemented in national law by EU member states. The implementation will not be the same among the countries. Some differences are possible. In some countries, terms like “commercial” and “business-like” are interpreted very strictly. Our data is used in commercial environments a lot. There are many companies using our data and contributing back to OpenStreetMap by developing software or paying their own data contributors – or just by making OSM available to the broad public. If OpenStreetMap becomes harder to use for commercial data purposes, due to these new restrictions, it will harm all of us.
What can I do to oppose the directive?
There are multiple options to become active:
Sending emails to MEPs is not useful or effective. It is likely that would be treated as spam and/or boost the (false) impression put forward by some advocates of the directive that the folks against the directive are “Google’s bots”.
Our number one request is that you join a protest. Join one of the many demonstrations or organise one yourself. There is a day of action in more then 30 cities all over Europe on 23 March. Dates and locations can be found at savetheinternet.info.
The web site saveyourinternet.eu provides suggestions and support to get in touch with members of the European Parliament. If we succeed in explaining to enough MEPs that upload filters as described in article 13 are a bad idea, the Parliament can reject the article or the whole proposal.
Press contact
Enquiries can be answered by the Communication Working Group at press@osmfoundation.org. As the Working Group members are volunteers, we invite you first to use your favorite search engine to see if your question has been answered in our forum or mailing lists. You can also ask your questions on the forum (OpenStreetMap account required for log-in), our mailing lists and in our chat rooms.
What is OpenStreetMap 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, such as ambulance services, fire brigades, humanitarian development and humanitarian crises response.
What is the OpenStreetMap Foundation The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK 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.
As of now we are accepting your talks and presentations in the following State of the Map 2019 tracks:
OSM Basics: Information dedicated to newcomers
Community & Foundation: Bringing people together, working group experiences, strategies & vision
Mapping: All about making the mapping easier and better
Cartography: Your ideas on how to create good-looking manifestations of the OSM dataset
Software Development: Software for processing and editing data
Data Analysis & Data Model: Reflections about the OSM data, its model and analysis of quality and completeness
User Experiences: Tell your surprising story of using OSM as an end-user
Academic Track: There will be a proper academic track, it will be announced separately!
Two novelties deserve a special mention:
The “OSM Basics” track: We would like to welcome newcomers with contributions that get them started in the fascinating world of OpenStreetMap. These talks should specifically address the needs of people not overly familiar with the OSM ecosystem.
The “Extended talk” submission type: Big ideas need time to grow. For talks in this category we will allow double the time (40 min) compared to the usual talks. Make sure to mention why your talk needs this extended space.
You will find the Call for Participations and the link to the submission form at:
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 in the UK 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. The State of the Map Organising Committee is one of our volunteer Working Groups.
State of the Map is the annual event for all mappers and OpenStreetMap users. In line with our motto “Bridge the Map”, we invite all OSM enthusiasts – whether you are a hobby mapper, a scientific researcher, a humanitarian, with an NGO or a government agency, a small business or a global company — to join us in Heidelberg, September 21-23, 2019 and strengthen existing and build new bridges. The HOT Summit, the annual gathering of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team community, will also be directly preceding SotM – to enable all SotM participants to easier attend HOT Summit and vice versa – and facilitate further exchange.
We want to enable as many of you as possible to be part of State of the Map 2019. We are happy to announce that we can provide financial support, thanks to the generosity of our sponsors
Each year we receive more scholarship applications than we are able to support. To help us best allocate the funds, we have different levels of scholarship to pick from:
Support scholarship (admission and accommodation)
Full scholarship (admission, accommodation and full travel costs)
Enhanced scholarship (admission, accommodation, full travel costs and extra support to cover evening meals and supplementary costs)
Here are some tips to help you complete your application. You can also check out Gregory’s post on how we selected scholars from previous year’s applicants.
Select the minimum level of scholarship you need. This will help us to make the best use of limited funds and enable more scholars to join.
Make sure you clearly state your visa and travel requirements, as well as potential other funding sources.
Answer the question “Please describe your involvement in OSM and how will attending State of the Map benefit you, your local mapping community and the wider OpenStreetMap project” in 1500 characters maximum. Keep sentences short. Focus on the benefits to you and to OpenStreetMap.
We want to hear about your contributions to OpenStreetMap, your project or your group. We do not want an account of a group’s work but your individual part in it. Try to use “I” not “we“.
You may include links to your OpenStreetMap profile, a local group you run, or software you created. If your written answer is satisfactory to get in our shortlist – we might take a look at these additional details.
What topics or views will you bring to SotM that are otherwise missing?
What do you plan to achieve through coming to the SotM?
What do you plan to do when you return home after SotM?
To enable our scholars to have the chance to extend their stay for the HOT Summit, this option will also be supported through generosity of HOT Summit sponsors. Please make sure to indicate if the HOT Summit is of interest for you on the form as well.
Review team For SotM 2019 we decided to contact past scholars who might want to be involved in the review process.
Twelve persons will review the applications (Thanks!). All people who replied or self-volunteered were included.
Eleven are past scholars.
Four are women.
Four volunteered prior to being contacted.
Geographic distribution of review team’s nationalities:
4 Africa West, East, Central and Southern
4 Asia-Pacific
4 Europe
Criteria for reviewing the applications:
Here’s a list of factors that we will consider when reviewing the applications:
Is the applicant part of an under-represented minority group?
Are they from an under-represented location?
Are they contributing to OSM in a substantial way? (Not only OpenStreetMap edits, but contributed to wiki and documentation, trainers, developers).
Have they applied previously and not gotten a scholarship?
Do they have a unique story or experience to share?
Are they in a position to share their SotM experience with a larger group?
Will their attendance benefit their local community in some way?
How difficult will their visa application be?
How will attending State of the Map benefit them and OpenStreetMap?
You can update your application before the 30th of March.
Can you support the scholarship program?
Is your company or organisation interested in sponsoring State of the Map 2019 and our scholarship program? Take a look at our sponsorship packages and email us at sponsor-sotm@openstreetmap.org for more information.
2019-03-12: This post was updated to add information about the review team and the criteria that will be used.
The international State of the Map conference is organised by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK 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. The State of the Map Organising Committee is one of our volunteer Working Groups.
A big use of the OpenStreetMap data is the web map on OpenStreetMap.org. Along with our hard working team of volunteer sysadmins who keep it going, we are helped by many donated tile cache servers around the world, which speed up the map in various regions. We are always open to more servers, but the Operations Working Group is currently looking for servers in Brazil, and Australia/New Zealand. If you or your organisation would like to donate a cache server and hosting, we’re ideally looking for a physical server or powerful VM with 8GB+ RAM and at least 146GB of storage. Read more details.
Our peak Brazil traffic is currently around 65 Mbps. Our peak Australian and New Zealand traffic is currently around 20 Mbps. See the full country breakdown in bits per second.
Some more information:
Brazil has the 10th highest traffic and is the largest country without a cache in it or nearby.
Worldwide peak traffic is 2300 Mbps.
Antarctica and Australia are the two continents we do not have caches on.
We fully manage the software and operating system. All config is managed via our chef recipes. We also run a local firewall on each server. If physical hardware, we monitor using it SMART, hp-health, etc and report any hardware issues back to the hosting organisation.
Will you help us and join the people and organisations that support OpenStreetMap? Thank you!
The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK 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. Volunteers, like the indefatigable team of server administrators, keep all of this hardware working.
OpenStreetMap tiles are free for everyone to use, but should be used with moderation. If you are a high traffic site you should look at switch2osm.org to find out how to use the data and keep the tiles available for everyone.
OpenStreetMap is powered by its community. While originally supported by individuals, the continuing growth and popularity of OSM have also spawned organised mapping efforts by companies employing mapping teams and unpaid groups like school classes that are directed to work on OSM.
Organised mapping efforts are an integral part of today’s OSM contribution landscape and, when done well, help make OSM better and more widely used.
The OSM Foundation has created the Organised Editing Guidelines that summarise expectations, consensus and established conventions based on discussions with the community, members of the OSMF advisory board and humanitarian mapping efforts. Their goal is to provide a framework to both organised mapping initiatives and the communities to encourage good organised mapping. They are not meant to apply to community activities like mapping parties between friends or doing a presentation on OSM at a local club. If you’re not sure whether you should apply them, contact the local community for advice.
The guidelines have been developed thanks to volunteers of the OSMF Data Working Group, with various rounds of feedback from the wider community, and have been approved by the Board of Directors. Unofficial translations are found here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing_Guidelines You can add your translation there, or contact the Communication Working Group at communication@osmfoundation.org
Sometimes edits made as part of an organised exercise can be problematic, or their accuracy/quality may be disputed by others in the community. As with other disputes, the Foundation’s Data Working Group will respond to organised edits that have gone wrong. While they will intervene for edits that are problematic, not following the guidelines per se is not treated an offense. The overall goal of the guidelines is to provide a framework for ‘sizeable, substantial’ activities: “We wanted something that doesn’t scare casual events off while letting us regulate a geography class gone berserk or a misguided volunteer mapathon.”
The local team prepared a wonderful logo and an appropriate conference motto “Bridging the Map” which not only applies to the basics of OSM community but also to our host city Heidelberg:
State of the Map 2019 logo by Michael Auer
Right next to the old bridge in Heidelberg there lives a curious little statue – a bronze monkey. In its hand, it holds a mirror to remind anyone crossing the bridge to look back from where they came from and remember who they are. For the 2019 SotM in Heidelberg we want to take the role of that little monkey and remind everyone that no matter where we are going and what we are doing with OSM, we should never forget that we all come from the same origin: a little map that anyone can modify and use. Whether you are a hobby mapper, a scientific researcher, a humanitarian, an NGO, a government agency, a small business or a global company — we want to bridge the gap between us, or better yet, we want to Bridge the Map.
Our estimated timeline for 2019 is
15 Feb – Call for Scholars 28 Feb – Call for Abstracts (general and academic) 30 Mar – Deadline of Call for Scholars 24 Apr – Deadline of Call for Abstracts 16 May – Start Early Bird ticket sale 20 Jun – Program Announcement 04 Jul – Switch to regular ticket prices 21-23 Sep – State of the Map in Heidelberg/Germany
Open open open
Apart from the daily work of conference preparation, we have spent considerable efforts in order to use more FOSS tools. We started by moving our meetings from Hangout to Mumble. We use HOT’s Mumble server which already serves the OSMF board and other OSMF working groups. So it was already proven that Mumble is smart and works on all platforms.Our next step was much more challenging. We moved our email communication from Google Mail to the OpenStreetMap mailing list server. We couldn’t move our domain yet as there were too many constraints for a rigorous cut. So we decided to keep the Google account with the stateofthemap.org MX until everything is sorted out. At the moment the mail address “team@stateofthemap.org” is still valid, but it is forwarded to sotm@openstreetmap.org. Tom – thank you so much! – has set up a number of private mailing lists for all our needs:
All these lists are private. Only members of the SotM working group or the appropriate teams are able to read the emails addressed to these lists. For example progam-sotm@openstreetmap.org is read by the program committee and used for all internal communication. At the same time everybody (from outside) can write to this email address send their questions to the program committee using this email address.
Our next step will concern the submission form for the conference contributions – the “Call for Abstracts”. We will move from Google forms to Pretalx, which is Open Source software. It is already used by FOSSGIS (the German local chapter). So we know about advantages and limitations.
We still have some proprietary tools in use, and switching from a proprietary to an Open Source tool takes additional work – not only for us but also for the operations working group. In the past few months we could spend some time on this, but during the hot phase of SotM preparation there will not be enough capacity. Also, the Open Source tools are sometimes less comfortable than the proprietary equivalent, and it needs a lot of communication to persuade all the affected people to make this additional effort. The State of the Map working group supports the idea of Open Source software, and we think this goal is worth the extra effort (even if the path is sometimes rocky).
Following the successful initiation of the Academic Track at State of the Map 2018 in Milan [1], this Track will be included again in the program of State of the Map 2019, to be held in Heidelberg on September 21-23, 2019.
The main purpose of the Academic Track is to bring together and foster interactions between the OpenStreetMap community at large (contributors, developers, users, etc.) and the academic/scientific community of researchers from all over the world.
A designated Leading Team would be in charge on the organization of the Academic Track, co-chaired by Marco Minghini (on behalf of the OSMF State of the Map Working Group) and Yair Grinberger (on behalf of the Heidelberg local team). We hereby issue a call for applications, inviting all interested individuals to apply to join the Leading Team. This team will be in charge of:
writing and publishing the call for abstracts/papers for State of the Map 2019
designing and managing the review process of the submitted abstracts, deciding which ones to accept for oral presentation or poster presentation
defining the Academic Track schedule at State of the Map 2019, by working in close contact with the Programme Selection Committee
planning and managing possible publication outputs, e.g. conference proceedings or a Special Issue in a scientific journal
In agreement with the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and the local team, it was decided that the Academic Track Leading Team will be composed by Marco and Yair plus 3 additional people that would be selected through this open call. Thus, we invite applications for researchers or academics to be part of the Academic Track Leading Team. The call is open to everyone interested. Applications shall be made exclusively by sending an e-mail to the OSM science mailing list science@openstreetmap.org (this requires registering for the list at https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/science), and filling the following template:
Name and Surname Please enter your name and surname.
Affiliation Please enter your (current) full affiliation.
Academic experience, in particular on OpenStreetMap Please enter a short description of your main academic interests and contributions, especially related to OpenStreetMap. A full list of OpenStreetMap-related publications (or a link to it) is appreciated.
Editorial experience Please enter a short description of your editorial experience, e.g. as a Member of the Editorial Board of scientific journals, Guest-Editors of Special Issues, reviewer for scientific journals. Place the focus on OpenStreetMap, when relevant.
Participation in State of the Map 2019 Despite it is not required that you are attending State of the Map 2019, please inform us whether you plan to attend (if selected as a member of the Academic Track Leading Team).
Only applications submitted according to this procedure and only self-nominations will be considered.
The deadline for applications is January 3, 2019.
Applications will be assessed by the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and the Heidelberg local team. The three available seats of the Academic Track Leading Team will be assigned based on the candidate’s personal merit and according to the overall goal of forming a diverse and Interdisciplinary Team. In absence of candidates who are meeting the expectations, the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and the Heidelberg local team reserve the right to select less than three people, or nominate additional persons by invitation.
Best regards, Yair and Marco – on behalf of the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and the State of the Map 2019 Heidelberg local team.
The European data protection regulations (GDPR) require that a number of API calls which are currently accessible to the public be modified so that they are either only accessible to logged-in users, or produce reduced output when the user is not logged in.
OSMF is looking for someone to prepare a pull request for acceptance against the current “openstreetmap-website” code that will implement these changes.
We are looking for someone willing and able to implement these changes for us to (a) the Rails API and (b) the C++ CGIMap binary. Both tasks can be performed by different people.
We would very much like to work with someone who has experience with OSM and ideally also with the affected software components. We would expect the work to be of a standard acceptable to the respective software maintainers, and especially we would expect the necessary tests to be written.
We are willing to pay for the work to be done. If you are willing and able to do this work for us, please reply and tell us:
your experience with OSM and the Rails API/CGIMap
how long it would take until you could deliver
what kind of payment you would ask for.
Please get in touchby November 15. Update 20th December: the call is still open and we welcome expressions of interest.
If you have followed the State of the Map news, you will know that OpenStreetMap Belgium has become the newest Local Chapter of the OpenStreetMap Foundation!
Introducing them, in their own words:
“OpenStreetMap Belgium started as a tiny group of mappers doing meetups. Over the years more and more people started showing up and with the increasing usage and visibility of OpenStreetMap it was time to start organizing ourselves better. The invitation from Open Knowledge Belgium to join them as a working group, giving us the structure we needed without all the overhead, came at the perfect time. From then until now we have been actively supporting OpenStreetMap by co-organizing FOSS4G Belgium, the Open Belgium yearly conference, meetups, mapathons and many other OSM related events. This all escalated a bit with the organizing of SotM in 2016, which was a great boost for our community. We are very happy to be able to join the OSMF as a local chapter and we hope we can have continued positive impact on the OpenStreetMap project both on a local level and internationally.
The OpenStreetMap Belgium chapter is for outreach. www.osm.be was built with this in mind. We offer free tiles for Belgium to help with the switch to OSM. We promote open source by doing projects with the Open Summer of Code, for example building a mapping tool that shows local government that their data was successfully integrated into OSM. We are also a “single point of contact” for people outside the community, making it easier for them to communicate with the project. At the same time, being an official voice helps to get the project be taken more seriously. As part of the wider OpenStreetMap movement, we try to support international friends in other countries – directly or through Missing Maps and related projects.”
