English version based on an automatic translation with deepl.

I had actually already decided not to write this blog post – but recent developments have led me to reconsider that decision. However, I’d like to start from the beginning so everyone can follow along, including those who aren’t FOSSGIS members and therefore likely haven’t heard much about these issues until now.

Background

Historically, the FOSSGIS association essentially began as an advocacy group for professional developers and users of free and open-source software in the GIS sector. However, the association’s goals were defined much more broadly from the start, and during my time there, FOSSGIS has generally always demonstrated an openness to activities outside this core area, which I have always viewed as very positive. In the end, however, this only applied as long as the dominance of professional interests was not called into question. In other words: While the generally significant role of development and use in the non-professional, private sector within the FOSS field was accepted and acknowledged, it was clearly positioned within the association as subordinate to the professional sector – something that is not generally the case in the global FOSS community.

At the end of 2017, the FOSSGIS association became the local representative for OpenStreetMap in Germany. This immediately called into question the dominance of professional interests within the association, and there was actually an opportunity for the German OSM mapping community to take over the association. This did not happen, primarily for three reasons:

• OpenStreetMap was already an important topic within the association, particularly among professional developers and users. So it wasn’t as though OpenStreetMap was completely new to the association and OSM activists found an untapped field there; rather, the topic was already established and integrated into the association’s professionally oriented structures.
• The German mapping community was and remains – despite being one of the largest and most active local communities worldwide – highly individualistic and very loosely organized. The overwhelming majority of mappers in Germany are content to map on their own and, beyond occasional local meetups, feel no need to organize or get involved – especially not where there are no existing structures and something has to be built from scratch.
• The hurdles for formal membership in the association were quite high, especially in early 2017 to 2018; one had to submit a written membership application (on paper) and pay a membership fee of EUR 30 per year, which was double the OSMF membership fee. As a result, the number of hobby mappers who joined the association in the early years due to FOSSGIS’s new role was likely significantly lower than the number of existing professional members with ties to OSM. In addition, having a say in the association’s formal decisions was (and still is) de facto tied to physical attendance at the annual general meeting. Online participation is not provided for (with the exception of the COVID years due to a special provision by law), and the delegation of votes is only possible to a very limited extent (a member present can only have one vote delegated to them).

Thus, not only was a takeover of the association by the OSM community practically ruled out, but de facto, hobby mappers have virtually no influence within the association.

In 2020, the general meeting decided to increase the membership fee for individuals from EUR 30 to EUR 40. At the same time, the membership fee for corporate members was doubled from EUR 100 to EUR 200, and a decision was made to create a permanent paid (part-time) position within the association for administrative work. I was not at the meeting at the time, so I cannot report on the discussion there beyond what is in the minutes (For those who remember: that was the legendary FOSSGIS conference held virtually on the eve of the first pandemic lockdown).

The paid positions within the association, which had previously been limited to internal administrative roles, were expanded in 2023 to include a so-called OSM Advisory Office (see here – the details of the job description appear to have been removed in the meantime). This, along with the ideas behind it and their practical development, would be a topic for a separate post; I’ll omit it here for the sake of brevity. Along with the announcement a month ago of the creation of another position for the development of OpenStreetMap training courses within the framework of FOSSGIS, it can be said that the association is increasingly active in the area of OpenStreetMap services, and is primarily focusing on paid work. Attempts to raise funds for this seem to have had mixed results – the idea of a funding program presented at the 2025 general meeting (I wrote about it here) does not seem to be going particularly well – instead, there appears to be a growing effort to seek public funding. This is particularly noteworthy given the wide range of unpaid consulting and lobbying work that has been carried out for many years by the hobby-mapping community, and which now, of course, stands in contrast to the paid activities within FOSSGIS.

It is interesting to note in this context that FOSSGIS is increasingly presenting itself as OpenStreetMap Germany, thereby implying a claim to represent the German OSM community. On the one hand, this is also emphasized in the association’s public communications, where it speaks of us, the community, but at the same time distances itself from the community and presents the association as a link to the community.

The Membership Fee

So much for the background. Prior to this year’s general meeting, the board sent a proposal to the members to increase the membership fee once again, this time to EUR 60 – meaning, combined with the previous increase, a doubling within seven years, which would position FOSSGIS at the very top among OSMF local chapters in terms of membership fees. I didn’t attend the FOSSGIS conference this year either, so I wasn’t at the general meeting, but apparently there was a discussion and the board’s proposal was not accepted; instead, the board was tasked with initiating an online general meeting to discuss the issue and reach a decision.

After the initial announcement and the anticipated approval by the general meeting, I had already decided to use this as an opportunity to terminate my membership in FOSSGIS, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was there a critical discussion of the proposal, but that it was also decided to discuss the matter as broadly as possible, at least within the association. And with this post, I would like to try to open this discussion to the OSM community outside the association as well. Whether this will ultimately be heard, of course, remains to be seen. In internal association discussions over the past few years, active members of the association, including those on the board, have repeatedly made it clear that they want the association’s decisions to be made exclusively within the association – uninfluenced by outside discussions.

To put the membership fee amounts into context: The standard FOSSGIS membership fee, currently EUR 40 (proposed to be EUR 60 in the future), applies to working members. For non-working members, there is a reduced fee of currently EUR 10 (proposed to be EUR 15 in the future). The association does not define working member; it is entirely a self-declaration. This distinction, especially in Germany with its current demographics, is quite a slap in the face for people who have to work to make a living, while people who do not have to work due to substantial non-work income pay less – regardless of whether this income is higher or lower than the work income of those who are doing paid work.

If we compare the annual membership fee to other professional associations and interest groups in Germany, even EUR 60 isn’t particularly high. A more interesting comparison is within the OSM community. Here are the annual membership fees for individuals for various organizations:

• OSMF: GBP 15, free for active OSM contributors
• OSM France: EUR 20
• OSM Switzerland: CHF 20
• OSM Austria: free
• OSM UK: GBP 5
• OSM US: USD 20
• OSGeo Oceania: free
• OSM Belgium: free
• Wikimedia Italia: EUR 25
• Stowarzyszenie OpenStreetMap Polska: PLN 50 (EUR 12)
• Asociación de Cartografía Colaborativa de Colombia: COP 350 (EUR 82), COP 175 (EUR 41) for active OSM contributors

In short: Even at the current rate of EUR 40, FOSSGIS is among the absolute top tier in the OSM sector; at EUR 60, it would be the most expensive OSMF local chapter for active OSM contributors. Among western countries with larger mapping communities, the gap would be enormous.

The most common argument I hear in favor of high individual membership fees is that the association does not want to become dependent on funding from external sources. However, this argument only holds water if an association makes a serious effort to manage its budget prudently, using only the limited contributions that individual members are able and willing to provide. This is clearly not the case with FOSSGIS. Even with a membership fee of EUR 60, the projected individual membership fees for FOSSGIS total less than EUR 20k. This is not even enough to finance the administrative position created in 2020. Personally, I find the idea of an OpenStreetMap Germany association that is financed by individual contributions and is not dependent on external interests for funding regular expenses quite appealing. But for that, it would be necessary to build the association almost entirely on volunteer work. FOSSGIS clearly decided against this many years ago, by 2020 at the latest. To now suggest that the membership fee increase somehow ensures financial independence does not align with the association’s economic reality.

What is always at stake in this whole issue is the tension described in the background section regarding FOSSGIS: the conflict between representing the professional interests of FOSS users and developers – including those related to OSM – and the claim to represent the German community of hobbyist mappers. A high membership fee results – whether intended or not – in the number of members without professional interests in the association remaining low. While the association may indeed have the sincere intention of also representing the interests of the German OSM community, this is clearly not a case of democratic representation by representatives from within the community itself, but rather by individuals with their own professional interests, which do not necessarily align with the collective interests of the community, but at best act as benevolent trustees (but with inevitable conflicts of interest).

My Proposal

I think the FOSSGIS association is at a crossroads here. The underlying conflict – which began in late 2017 when FOSSGIS formally became the local representative for OpenStreetMap in Germany, and which the association did not really resolve for over eight years – could definitely come to a head here. Will the association substantially open itself up to the hobby mapper community in Germany – in the sense that mappers are not only welcome to assimilate into the existing association culture, but also in the sense that they actually expand and reshape the association with their own culture? Or will the association continue to fly the OpenStreetMap Germany banner, but exclusively as a label for its own professional activities and those of its members?

I have already mentioned that this question does not depend solely on decisions made within FOSSGIS, but also on whether the mapping community in Germany manages to organize itself sustainably, independent of professional interests. But FOSSGIS is making things too easy for itself when it claims to be open to anyone who wants to get involved. Because, as I said, that’s only true for those who are willing to adapt extensively to the existing association culture.

Against this backdrop, my proposal for membership fees would be:

• Eliminate the distinction between employed and unemployed members.
• Lower the standard membership fee, thereby sending a clear signal that the association is explicitly open to FOSS users/developers and mappers without commercial interests. Proposal: EUR 30.
• Set a significantly reduced fee for active OSM contributors (the OSMF’s definitions could be adopted here). Proposal: EUR 10.
• Create a support membership fee for individual members, intended for anyone who derives substantial income from FOSS development, FOSS use, or the use of OSM data, but also open to all members on a voluntary basis. Proposal: EUR 90.
• Corporate memberships tiered according to number of employees/revenue. The proposal from the general meeting seems reasonable here, with the exception of the idea for solo self-employed individuals. The idea that an employee with a FOSS/OSM connection should generally pay a lower membership fee than self-employed individuals does not seem objectively justifiable to me. Nor does the alternative interpretation that solo self-employed individuals can or should have an independent corporate membership in addition to an individual membership. A supporting membership for all members with a professional connection to FOSS/OSM therefore seems more sensible to me.

In addition – and this is actually more important than membership dues – it would be of fundamental importance for FOSSGIS to be able to present itself credibly as the representative of OpenStreetMap in Germany that all of the association’s activities related to OSM be open to broad participation by the German OSM community, and not closed and reserved solely for association members. I consider this very important, but I also realize that this idea is likely to be very unpopular within the association. The way communication has often been handled in the past – treating things as internal association matters where outsiders have no say – speaks volumes. But truly substantial changes simply don’t happen without conflict.

In Conclusion

I hope that these remarks provide OSM activists in Germany who are not members of FOSSGIS with insight into the latest developments within the association, which also presents itself as their representative. And that, against this backdrop, my suggestions might find support or at least a positive response, encouraging others – especially hobby mappers – to articulate their own ideas.

Perhaps the fact that I’m discussing this publicly here will even generate some international interest. I’ve already outlined the unique position FOSSGIS would occupy within the global OSM community with an annual membership fee of 60 euros for regular mappers.

What I’d also like to note is that – and I’ve emphasized this several times in the past – I view the culture of open discussion within the FOSSGIS association as something very positive. However, so far it has been almost entirely limited to in-person events. If the association manages to open up this culture to digital channels and beyond the boundaries of its membership, this would have enormous potential for productive cooperation with the OSM community, especially beyond Germany. It is in this spirit that I would like this post to be understood – while I do see the conflicts as I have highlighted them here, I also see the enormous potential of this connection – provided there is a collective will within the association to adapt and open up, and to accept and support a truly new diversity within the association.

Update: Changed a formulation above based on comment – see the discussion of the German version.