Hi,

I’ve recently got some flak about a mailing list post that I wrote opposing a candidate for the OSMF board election. I felt that this candidate and their employer, Facebook, were getting away with too many things that would be inacceptable from anyone else.

Because the candidate and his employer steadfastly claim that the attribution they provide was in accordance with the license, I saw an analogy with Donald Trump claiming stuff that was obviously not true, like “I had the greatest crowd in my inauguration” or so. And getting away with it.

To make this point as drastically as possible, I used a quote from Trump from before the 2016 election, the infamous “Access Hollywood Tape”. I still remember when that - deeply misogynistic - claim of getting away with sexual assault hit the press. I was sure: This man is never going to be elected; it is just not possible. I was proven wrong. That’s why the quote stuck in my head, as the eternal conundrum of why so many people can vote for a politician who says such deplorable things. (There are other examples in history books; but this one I lived through.) When I wrote the mailing list post, I felt that, in terms of the values we have as OSM, claiming that you can simply ignore our attribution requirements and hoping get away with it, was equally impossible.

The echo to my mailing list post has shown me that I should have been more careful in which words I pick up and re-use. It was totally my intention to say “don’t vote for that candidate because they think they can get away with crass violations of what we think is proper”. But I now see that, by choosing these words and not, for example, the quote about Trump being able to shoot a person dead on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, I have dealt a blow to women in OpenStreetMap. Had I spoken about shooting a person, that would have been “any person” of any gender and equally bad for everyone; but my choice of words singled out women and contained a drastic picture of sexual assault, something that far too many women have been subjected to, or at least know someone who has been. By even mentioning it, no matter what the context is and how many quotes or “not”s you put around it, you can already make a female reader feel discouraged - such a serious topic, and it’s being used here for a cheap political takedown.

A couple of women in OSM whom I have known for a while have reached out to me personally to make this point and I appreciate that very much. I now understand that no matter how many people are using the phrase, we should all work towards getting rid of it as soon as possible, rather than using it as if it was everyday language to make points that do not even have anything to do with sexual assault. I will certainly be more careful in the future. I will still be finding clear words when speaking out against things or behaviour that I find problematic, but I will double check not to put anyone in the crossfire by choosing the wrong words or the wrong figures of speech.

If you are a woman and if anything I ever said or wrote in OSM has given you the impression that I am in the least a misogynist, or don’t want women in OSM, or think that they are inferior programmers, or their place is in the home with the kids or any of that last-century shit, please be assured that nothing could be further from the truth. I have worked with many women in OSM and I think we got along well even when we had different opinions. Over the years, I’ve personally introduced more than a hundred women to OSM mapping through introductory courses at the local university and other events. I’m also teaching women to code as part of their GIS studies at the local university, and I think that within the limits of what I can do as a man, I’m doing these jobs well, treating women with the greatest respect, encouraging them, never once being condescending or giving them the impression that their male classmates are “better at tech” (newsflash, they’re not, though they often think they are).

I’m totally on board with the idea that people of any gender should get the same chances in life. That includes taking steps to support underrepresented genders in OSM, and that includes not throwing around phrases about sexual assault in discussions about map attribution. I am sorry for that; it was a bad judgement on my part. If you are a woman in OSM - or a woman interested in OSM - and there’s something I can do to make OSM a nicer place for you, feel free to reach out. OSM needs more women, not less.

Sincerely, Frederik