OpenStreetMap Foundation

Last updated
OpenStreetMap Foundation
Founded22 August 2006;19 years ago (2006-08-22)
Type Company limited by guarantee
Registration no.05912761
Location
  • St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WS, United Kingdom
Coordinates 52°33′04″N1°49′07″W / 52.55098°N 1.81860°W / 52.55098; -1.81860
Expenses£91,607 (expenses for 2011-12) [1]
Website osmfoundation.org OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

The OpenStreetMap Foundation (abbreviated OSMF) is a non-profit organisation whose aim is to support and enable the development of freely-reusable geospatial data. Founded in 2006, it is closely connected with the OpenStreetMap project, although its constitution does not prevent it supporting other projects.

Contents

History

The OpenStreetMap Foundation was registered in England and Wales on 22 August 2006 as a company limited by guarantee. [2] In 2007, it held the first State of the Map conference in Manchester.

In October 2009, the foundation announced that its members, rather than the OpenStreetMap contributors at large, would vote on changing OpenStreetMap's data license from Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike to the Open Database License. [3]

In September 2013, the foundation began accepting corporate memberships in an "associate member" (nonvoting) category. The initial corporate members were Geofabrik, Geotab, Naver, NextGIS, and Mapbox. [4] [5] In 2018, GlobalLogic was implicated in a coordinated effort to sign up employees as individual members.

Active contributors membership program was introduced in August 2020. As per this active contributors to OpenStreetMap through editing (at least 42 active days in the latest period of one year) or off-line activities can apply for free of cost membership. They will have voting rights for electing board members. [6]

In June 2021, the foundation stated that the effects of Brexit have prompted them to consider a move back into the European Union due to issues with database rights, difficulties with getting charitable status for the foundation, and the increasing difficulty of using PayPal and banking in the United Kingdom. The foundation has not announced the location of its new headquarters. [7] As of February 2024, the candidates for relocation are Belgium and Luxembourg. [8]

By the end of 2022, the foundation had recognized 18 local chapters worldwide, including OSM Austria, supporting regional growth and community engagement.

List of all board of directors

Governance

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a membership organization. Membership in the foundation is separate from a user account on the OpenStreetMap website: a user account is required to contribute to the map, while foundation membership entitles one to vote at a general meeting. [16]

The foundation is run by a board of seven members, including the foundation's officers: chairman, secretary and treasurer. [17] The board is elected by the foundation's dues-paying members. As of September 2025, the board consists of Craig Allan, Daniela Waltersdorfer, Roland Olbricht, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano, Brazil Singh. [18]

Several working groups, composed mostly of volunteers, carry out day-to-day operations on behalf of the foundation: [19] [20]

Several local chapters are affiliated with the OpenStreetMap Foundation. [24] The local chapter for Italy is Wikimedia Italia, which is also a chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Programs and initiatives

The OpenStreetMap Foundation promotes and supports the OpenStreetMap project, but does not formally own the project or its contents. [25] The foundation's relatively low profile in OpenStreetMap's development has been contrasted with the Wikimedia Foundation's relationship to Wikipedia. [26] [27]

In addition to day-to-day operations within the OpenStreetMap project, the foundation and its working groups run several initiatives to promote the project's growth. Its annual State of the Map conference is the flagship conference within the OpenStreetMap community. The GPStogo program lends GPS receivers to mappers in developing countries. [28]

Notable people

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Finances/Income 2012 - OSMF". Osmfoundation.org. Retrieved 2013-08-15.
  2. ↑ "Company Details". Companies House . Retrieved 16 April 2011.
  3. 1 2 Bégin, Daniel; Devillers, Rodolphe; Roche, Stéphane (2018). "Contributors' enrollment in collaborative online communities: the case of OpenStreetMap". International Journal of Geographical Information Science . 32 (8). Taylor & Francis: 1611–1630. doi: 10.1080/10095020.2017.1370177 .
  4. ↑ "Welcoming our first Corporate Members" (Press release). OpenStreetMap Foundation. 20 July 2014. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  5. ↑ "NextGIS among first OpenStreetMap Foundation's corporate members" (Press release). NextGIS. 21 July 2014. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  6. ↑ "Active OSM contributor? You can now easily join the OpenStreetMap Foundation". OpenStreetMap. 2020-08-20. Retrieved 2023-08-07.
  7. ↑ Hern, Alex (2021-06-30). "OpenStreetMap looks to relocate to EU due to Brexit limitations". The Guardian. Retrieved 2021-06-30.
  8. ↑ "Board/Minutes/2024-02 - OpenStreetMap Foundation". osmfoundation.org. Retrieved 2024-06-22.
  9. ↑ Hoff, Henk. "2025 Board Members, OSMF"". OpenStreetMap Foundation.
  10. ↑ Hoff, Henk. "2025 Board Members, OSMF"". OpenStreetMap Foundation.
  11. ↑ Hoff, Henk. "2025 Board Members, OSMF"". OpenStreetMap Foundation.
  12. ↑ Hoff, Henk. "2025 Board Members, OSMF"". OpenStreetMap Foundation.
  13. ↑ Hoff, Henk. "2025 Board Members, OSMF"". OpenStreetMap Foundation.
  14. ↑ Hoff, Henk. "2025 Board Members, OSMF"". OpenStreetMap Foundation.
  15. ↑ Hoff, Henk. "2025 Board Members, OSMF"". OpenStreetMap Foundation.
  16. ↑ Anderson, Jennings; Sarkar, Dipto; Palen, Leysia (May 18, 2019). "Corporate Editors in the Evolving Landscape of OpenStreetMap". ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information . 8 (5). International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing: 232. Bibcode:2019IJGI....8..232A. doi: 10.3390/ijgi8050232 .
  17. ↑ "Officers & Board". OpenStreetMap Foundation. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
  18. ↑ "Officers & Board". OpenStreetMap Foundation. 13 September 2025. Retrieved 13 September 2025.
  19. 1 2 Spreng, Michael (September 21, 2019). Past and Future of the OpenStreetMap Foundation's Membership Working Group (PDF). State of the Map. Heidelberg.
  20. ↑ Rice, Matthew T.; Paez, Fabiana I.; Mulhollen, Aaron P.; Shore, Brandon M.; Caldwell, Douglas R. (November 2012). "Crowdsourced Geospatial Data" (PDF). Alexandria, Virginia: United States Army Topographic Engineering Center. pp. 104–105. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 11, 2020. Retrieved February 13, 2021.
  21. ↑ Andrea Ballatore (5 May 2014). "Defacing the Map: Cartographic Vandalism in the Digital Commons". The Cartographic Journal . 51 (3): 214–224. arXiv: 1404.3341 . Bibcode:2014CartJ..51..214B. doi:10.1179/1743277414Y.0000000085. ISSN   0008-7041. S2CID   1828882. Wikidata   Q55967185.
  22. ↑ Neis, Pascal; Goetz, Marcus; Zipf, Alexander (November 22, 2012). "Towards Automatic Vandalism Detection in OpenStreetMap". ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. 1 (3). International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing: 315–332. Bibcode:2012IJGI....1..315N. doi: 10.3390/ijgi1030315 .
  23. ↑ Quinn, Sterling D.; Tucker, Doran A. (November 6, 2017). "How geopolitical conflict shapes the mass-produced online map". First Monday . 22 (11). doi: 10.5210/fm.v22i11.7922 .
  24. ↑ Perkins, Chris (2014). "Plotting practices and politics: (im)mutable narratives in OpenStreetMap" . Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers . 39 (2). Wiley-Blackwell: 307. Bibcode:2014TrIBG..39..304P. doi:10.1111/tran.12022. JSTOR   24582895.
  25. ↑ Guo, Huadong; Goodchild, Michael F.; Annoni, Alessandro, eds. (January 1, 2020). Manual of Digital Earth. Springer Nature. p. 603. doi:10.1007/978-981-32-9915-3. ISBN   978-981-32-9914-6. S2CID   208086021 – via Google Books.
  26. ↑ Arsanjani, Jamal Jokar; Zipf, Alexander; Mooney, Peter; Helbich, Marco, eds. (March 3, 2015). OpenStreetMap in GIScience: Experiences, Research, and Applications. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer. p. 153. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-14280-7. ISBN   978-3-319-14279-1. S2CID   30689822 – via Google Books.
  27. ↑ Stalder, Felix (January 16, 2018). The Digital Condition. Translated by Pakis, Valentine A. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 214. ISBN   978-1-5095-1959-0 – via Google Books.
  28. ↑ Bennett, Jonathan (September 2010). OpenStreetMap. Birmingham: Packt. ISBN   9781847197511 – via Google Books.
  29. ↑ Hoff, Henk (16 August 2012). "Board grants project founder the title of "Chairman Emeritus"". OpenStreetMap Foundation. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  30. ↑ Coast, Steve (6 January 2016). "exit". osmf-talk (Mailing list). Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  31. ↑ "Officers & Board". OpenStreetMap Foundation. July 6, 2021. Retrieved July 9, 2021.
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