OSMF Candidate recall
Submitted by rw on Thu, 08/20/2009 - 00:58.
There are fewer than 24 hours left to vote for the OSM Foundation board of directors 2009-2010 and something ugly has just come to light. It appears that as many as twenty employees of a company have just registered as OSMF members in that last few hours.
In spite of calls for a voluntary limit or one OSMF candidate per company, employees of one company maintain more than one candidate and insist that the membership voices be heard.
Indeed those arguing against the one candidate per company limitation appear to be singing from the same hymnbook.
Steve Coast, CloudMade Founder:
I agree with others that the members should be the ones to decide. I
don't think arbitrary rules will help much at this stage and I don't
think it would ever get to the stage of being a majority or more
anyway from any one organisation.
My position on this is clear. It is he Foundation membership who
elect the Board. We should not restrict the member's choice based on
the affiliation of a candidate to one company or cause. The OSM-F
membership have all of the information needed to make an intelligent
choice that will benefit OpenStreetMap.
I agree. I think that the best course is to let the electorate decide
in each election.
CloudMade have been beneficial contributors to OpenStreetMap to date. Nobody should question the personal integrity of Nick and Steve or their many contributions to OpenStreetMap. This is business. CloudMade is a business and businesses have no personal integrity. That's part of why a corporation is a separate person
. Don't blame me. I just work here.
It's just business.
Why does CloudMade need more than one candidate for the board of directors? I don't know.
Why did CloudMade employees appear to register en mass shortly before the voting deadline? I don't know.
Why does any single company, or group need more than a single voice at the OSMF board of directors? I don't know.
All of the OSMF board candidates are capable, each is a good person. But several are connected to CloudMade one way or another and CloudMade statements (above) lead me to believe that CloudMade want more than one voice at the table.
Any company that allows their employee, or their director, to sit on the board of another entity understand that their employee will be investing time in this outside endeavor. So CloudMade is allowing several of their employees / directors to make this investment and CloudMade is risking several of them being committed to this substantial investment of time for another full year. Clearly CloudMade would not permit this if it were not in CloudMade's best interest.
And it could be fine.
But how is it in the best interest of the OpenStreetMap Foundation to allow more than one candidate from one company at the expense of another excellent candidate from another company? Would it deprive the Foundation of another company to make generous contributions because they feel their voice is not heard on the board? Will CloudMade be twice the benefactor with twice the representation?
Get out and vote for the excellent candidates for the OpenStreetMap board of Directors. But do it fast!
I see nothing against the rules in anything that CloudMade and employees have done, but it just stinks from here. We, as OSM contributors avoid the faintest whiff of copying from copyright sources because wish to avoid infringement and event the faintest whiff of the appearance of infringement. We as a foundation are considering a new license not because of challenges to the license but because we wish to avoid the risk of challenges to the license.
But this stinks of a potential power grab. One that I don't understand and one that I have a hard time believing. But it stinks to me.
CloudMade should withdraw all but one candidate from the list of nominees.
Articles © 2010 
Map images and data © 2010
Response
Perhaps 'Cloudmade' doesn't. Perhaps simply the people who work at Cloudmade are the sort of people who are already greatly affiliated with OSM and so believe personally that each of their individual selves would be good additions to the board.
I guess because the employees are all OSM contributors and so have a personal stake in the project. They would have see that there is an election coming up and so registered themselves so that their voices can be heard.
There shouldn't be any 'at the expense of' if those that are voted in are those that are considered the best candidates by the voters.
Personally I don't agree. The voters will decide who are the best candidates and I wouldn't be surprised if more than one Cloudmade employee gets on the board since they are the sort of people who have put a lot of time and effort into OSM in the past.
P.S. I am not an OSMF member and am not affiliated with Cloudmade in any way
Agreed
Thanks for writing this, Richard.
Thank you, everybody, for your comments
We take the time to talk about this because we care about the OpenStreetMap project. I hope that the discussion will continue once the 2009-2010 OSMF board is seated.
Post new comment