[Osmf-talk] voting fraud

Guillaume Rischard openstreetmap at stereo.lu
Tue Feb 5 00:46:07 UTC 2019

Hi Kathleen,

I don't know if you've read the report, or if we should have been more concise? :)

There is indeed no claim or evidence that every individual employee had bad faith or sinister motives. They might not even all have known what they were participating in. This is a matter for the corporate actors (managers, et al). It's unnecessary to speculate about what every individual had in mind, and I think we should focus on what we do know.

It's easy to imagine employees wanting another line on a CV - why not? - but the just-so story doesn't match with the evidence. I'm not sure whether Darafei [1] was being sarcastic, but I’m certain Nuno is. We've been over the data with a fine comb, looked eagerly for innocent explanations. We haven't found even hints in favour of that hypothesis, and a lot against it.

GlobalLogic employees have mentioned voting on [talk-in] (p. 5), and repeatedly to the board and privately to MWG (p. 20). They have been silent in public, but we've also been told by insiders and informed outsiders that they've been told not to talk (p. 17).

You say that the individuals have unsubscribed from osmf-talk, but there is no evidence of this either. On 17 Jan, we checked the two cohorts: there were 2 GlobalLogic subscribers (who are still subscribed)  and 12 French subscribers.

Why would they not tell us this story instead of a made-up one? Why repeatedly talk about voting? Why do it just before the cut-off? Why not a more visible corporate membership for a third of the price? Why gag employees? 

We don't know what it was, but this wasn't just supporting the foundation or personal development.


[1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2019-February/005902.html

> On 4 Feb 2019, at 20:42, Kathleen Lu via osmf-talk <osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
> One question, not a single one of these, recently called 100 "humans" expressed concern, doubts or showed any sign of not being able to vote? 100, not 10, 100 that did not express themselves about not being able to vote. Lets me think that people in India are very shy indeed. Lucky we got 900 members and those "100 humans" were just 1/10 of the members. We must be doing a great job at promotion to get new members with that rush sign up.
> Wait a minute. If any of the individuals *had* shown concern about not being able to vote, wouldn't that have been taken as evidence that they had been part of a conspiracy to manipulate the election? That the individuals didn't express any concern re the election suggests support for Darafei's theory: These individuals agreed to sign up for OSMF (with their employer facilitating signup and payment) in a manner similar to a job-related training or certification. 
> (Whether their managers had any more sinister plans or not is a separate question, but there's no evidence that the individuals had any intent to do anything.)
> Then the issue blew up with an investigation and lots of questions and speculation, and now they do not want to say anything for fear of saying something "wrong" (whether that is by the listserv's standard or their managers' standard) so they stay silent, or have unsubscribed.
> -Kathleen
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