[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Privacy Policy

Fri Dec 18 04:53:46 PST 2015

All,

One part is the discussion is the negotiable part: what do we regard as an appropriate way to use social media and mailing list for "the good cause". 

The other part of the discussion, as Maxi mentioned, is the legal part. That's a tough one. though not being a lawyer, I did some quick research on this. Some observations, in no particular order:

1. The laws in all countries are different on this subject. In general in the EU laws tends to be based on opt-in, US law is more based upon opt-out. 

More specific: within Europe the EU-regulations have been implemented in the members state's law in different ways. I don't have the slightest idea about laws on this in other parts of the world.

2. Minimal requirements are: a) a clear sender en b) an easy opt-out option

3. In some European laws there is a distinction between business 2 business (B2B) mailings, and business to customers (B2C)mailings. B2C is the more strict one and required opt-in, whereas B2B in some EU-countries only requires an opt-out. So, the rules for a mailing to potential sponsors is less strict than those for a mailing to potential attendees

4. The law you have to obey not the one of the sender, but the law of the receivers origin. 

5. Both the actual sender of the spam-mail, as well as the one who tell the sender to do so are responsible.

6. Anti SPAM law not just covers pure commercial mailings, but also charity etc.

7a. One is allow to send commercial mailing to those who are already customer. 

7b. An attendee of a previous (recently?) FOSS4G could be regarded as an existing customer. A member of any OSGeo mailing list not, I suppose. 

8. In our case it is not clear who is the legal owner of the address list(s). Is an email address list of the official Dutch local chapter OSGeo.nl also owned by OSGeo.org? This gets even more complex on the co-operation part: e.g. is a FOSS4G-NA mailing list owned by OSGeo, by Locationtech, by the LOC? 

9a. Does (from a legal point of view) attending a small Dutch meeting organised by OSGeo.nl mean that I declare myself potentially interested in a) a broader Dutch event b) a similar European event c) a similar North-American event d) a similar Worldwide event.

9b The same, but the other way around.

10. OSGeo doesn't have a lawyer, nor a "legal committee", I guess. 

Conclusion and proposal:

Is all of this nonsense, and should we just go ahead? I don't think so. If we do, we might just as well simply forget about different open source software and open data licenses. 

We do have contact with LocationTech ;-). And I suppose LocationTech (or Eclipse) does have an more detailed view of the legal do's and don'ts than my observations. How about asking LocationTech for a legal advice on this issue (just the facts, no opinions please), 

Regards, 

Gert-Jan

Van: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] Namens Massimiliano Cannata
Verzonden: vrijdag 18 december 2015 10:40
Aan: Ian Edwards
CC: OSGeo Discussions; <conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org>
Onderwerp: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Privacy Policy: [was FOSS4GNA - Someone is watching you :-o]

All,

I believe the point is not if it was nice or not to receive a message for being aware of events (that we will be aware in any case thanks to the social media and mailing lists) but rather if it is appropriate (or even legal?) perform these unsolicited mail campaign and the sharing of these data among person on private and non-regulated way.

We all know that having the data, it doesn't mean having the right to distribute it to 3rd party.

@Ian: I also don't think a single line of acknowledgement while registering cover the issue. 

For instance your proposal of a "non-active OPT-IN" it seems to me not in line with the EU regulation discussed in these days here (but i'n not a lawyer):

 <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20151217IPR08112/New-EU-rules-on-data-protection-put-the-citizen-back-in-the-driving-seat> http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20151217IPR08112/New-EU-rules-on-data-protection-put-the-citizen-back-in-the-driving-seat

(thanks Helli for the link!)

I request, and will add in the next board meeting agenda, to have a deeper discussion and agreement at OSGeo level.

Because I think that the privacy protection is a matter larger then the FOSS4G only and is of concern to the whole OSGeo community as it may apply to several cases.

I feel that OSGeo shall define like for the Code of Conduct a Privacy Policy that applies all over the community and that members shall agree to follow when they participate in the community.

my 0.1 cent,

Maxi

2015-12-18 10:00 GMT+01:00 Ian Edwards <iedwards.pub at gmail.com>:

I support Paul and Steven's approach (and thank them for their actions to help keep the community aware of events) -- but I think it's also certainly the case that there is always a set of people on our mailing lists who have a strong preference that their details are not shared in a way they do not agree to up front - In fact, I'm sure we would all include ourselves in this category as the type of "spam" we may receive becomes less relevant to our interests.

Another way to reach a constructive outcome may be to discuss on the conference dev <http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/OSGeo-Conference-Committee-f3721662.html>  list an update to the FOSS4G Handbook <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Handbook#Editing_this_document> /Cookbook with guidelines on opting out when submitting your details.  My preference would be a statement that does not require a lot of effort from our volunteer organisers, something like:

"by submitting your email address you consent to us sharing your details for the purpose of keeping you informed of future similar events.  You can unsubscribe from these communications at anytime using the unsubscribe links provided."

===

Ian Edwards

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 10:28 PM, Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Maxi,
I love the constructive research that you have started here.

Email privacy was not as topical when foss4g email lists started getting collected, and tracing technologies such as mail chimp were as assessable as mail chimp is now. So we are right to retrospectively develop our policy in this area.

If you are up for it, I suggest following a similar process to what we did for getting the OSGeo Code of Conduct in place.
1. Research best practice policies. Find one that meets OSGeo community requirements (ideally addressing the majority of the ideas on this email thread)
2. Ideally find something that has been adopted and maintained as best practice among many organisations. (This is the Open Source Way).
3. Reference it, copy it verbatim, tweak it, or collate with other sources, (possibly into a wiki page)
4. Propose to OSGeo community for adoption. Collate feedback, tweak.
5. Have OSGeo adopt the policy.

Warm regards Cameron

On 18/12/2015 4:26 am, Daniel Kastl wrote:

Hi,

I wanted to share some thoughts, because I don't want that Maxi's concerns are buried under lots +1's, that "we are just doing our best for a successful FOSS4G". Maybe Maxi's initial email was a bit strong and contained the  "LocationTech" keyword ;-)
I don't think anyone (and for sure not Maxi) wants FOSS4G or OSGeo not to be successful, and nobody is against marketing. 

However doing something with good intent doesn't mean, that it's right, right?
If there is a privacy policy, we need to respect it and handle personal data (like email addresses) accordingly. If there is no privacy policy, we probably should have one, because there are at least a few countries I know, where not being able to opt-out or receiving unwanted emails can become a legal issue quickly (and cost money).

I remember a few months ago the discussion about Code of Conduct, where some people thought, we don't need that, because we're well-educated and friendly people, respecting each other, etc.. A code of conduct wasn't something I cared about that time, because maybe it's not common in countries where I live. But I learned, that it's an important document for North American countries. And I think the privacy topic is a widely discussed issue in European countries, and we have some lessons learned about services/organizations trying to track us. 
So that's maybe the reason, why some are not so happy to click an encrypted link with tracking ID (and whatever else). While I think you already get tracked, when you open the email and the transparent image gets loaded.
Speaking as a Japanese citizen, it's even seen as bad practice here to sent HTML emails, so almost every commercial email is text only with beautiful ASCII art and is really hard to look at.

While reading this thread I had the following questions actually:
- Is the collected database of email addresses available on request for every local chapter?
- If a local chapter passes it to some third party organization (in this case LocationTech, but replace it with any other name), what happens with these addresses later? Are they now merged with the "LocationTech Tour" database or the whole Eclipse address pool, etc.?
- If I didn't open my email, because I'm not from North America, will I be removed from the database and future announcements?

I think most email addresses collected from further events were for registration purpose. There is no way to register without giving OSGeo an email address.
And even if we won't harm anyone, we didn't ask those people, if they would like to opt-in for a newsletter-like service. 
So I find it somehow OK (gray-zone) to use the existing address collection for marketing future global FOSS4G events (it's only once a year), but you need to understand that FOSS4G NA is a regional event, and that the emails probably haven't been filtered by region. If we continue this practice, will then every local FOSS4G be able to spread the word in the name of OSGeo using a collected address list of the past 10 years?

Personally I think, that as a community we can do much better marketing than using MailChimp.
Maybe it's a good idea to add an opt-in form to FOSS4G registrations, where people can sign up for event announcements, even with regional preferences eventually?

Best regards,
Daniel

On 18/12/15 01:09, Steven Feldman wrote:

+1,000,000 to what Paul has said 

I also passed the FOSS4G 2013 list (which included names for 2011 and previous FOSSS4Gs) to the 2014 team in the spirit of fraternal support to future FOSS4Gs, I believe that was the right thing to do even though we neglected to have specific opt in/out option. No doubt they passed the extended list to 2015 and they have in turn shared with 2016. This is good not bad.

We need to separate the animus towards LT from the apparent horror at the use of a ‘commercial’ service like MailChimp. Those of us who earn our living from Open Source Geo need to promote Open Source Geo and that means outreach to people who may not be followers of our mailing lists, so we need other channels. e-mail marketing is an established way of reaching potential FOSS4G participants, it is not evil, it probably isn’t spam (even if you haven’t opted in) as long as you provide an immediate opt out from further mail (which MailChimp does really well).

If LT are willing to allow us access to their large contact list, surely that is something we should say thank you for not complain about? We might want to ask ourselves why their list is so much larger than ours? We have a list of several thousand accumulated from previous FOSS4Gs, using MailChimp enables us to clean that list down to interested participants very efficiently by providing a simple opt out.

There is no reason why we should not continue to maintain a growing list of people who have attended, sponsored or expressed interest in OSGeo/FOSS4G. The norm should be that you are opted in by default as a result of past interest but every mail provides the option to opt out.

Evangelising Open Source Geo is IMHO immensely worthwhile. To do that you need to be a bit pushy while finding the right balance. 

Let’s applaud our advocates, conference organisers and marketeers, not moan at them

Apologies if this is a bit ranty (the first draft was way more ranty)

Peace and goodwill to everyone for the holiday season whatever your faith

______
Steven

On 18/12/2015 6:28 am, Jody Garnett wrote:

Thanks for the productive discussion - some of those privacy policies seem to be website specific ( rather than for an organization as a whole ).

We just are rebooting the webcom so the timing is good for a privacy discussion. It may be easier to start here and then branch out to project / committee email lists and a foundation wide policy. 

We have a different understanding of foss4g Maxi.

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 4:08 AM Massimiliano Cannata <massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch> wrote:

Dear Gert, deal all, 

after a few days of discussion I would like to sum up some considerations to re-focus to subject of my first e-mail and that in my opinion should led OSGeo foundation to at least one or two argument for discussion.

1- Some FOSS4G events made use of "aggressive" marketing strategies using mailing lists where the users didn't explicitly agree in being notified.

2- There are laws on privacy protection which are different  for different countries/region (this is explained for example at this resource, but I'm not a loyer: http://www.lsoft.com/resources/optinlaws.asp )

3- OSGeo act globally and should be respectful as much as possible of all the existing rules

4- FOSS4G is the OSGeo's label of their Free and Open Source Software For Geospatial conferences

Said that each person or organization is responsible for its acts (and is free to behave as he/she/it prefer), I would like that OSGeo - and FOSS4G that is with no doubt recognized as an OSGeo event - act in respect of a well defined privacy protection policy with is 

as much protective of privacy as possible.

Example of Privacy Policy can be found for example in:

- Apache foundation (http://www.apache.org/foundation/policies/privacy.html) 

- Eclipse foundation (https://eclipse.org/legal/privacy.php) 

- Debian (http://www.debianit.com/privacy-policy/)

- Software Freedom Conservancy (https://sfconservancy.org/privacy-policy/)

- OpenStack (https://www.openstack.org/privacy/)

>From a short reading all of them seems state that they do not pass information to third parties and do not use these information for sending newsletter unless explicitly agreed.

So, if I raised you attention to this hot topic and in the future people will be more sensitive and respectful of privacy when they act in the name of FOSS4G or OSGeo I'm 1000% happy and accept any blame on me.

Best regard,

Maxi

2015-12-15 23:38 GMT+01:00 Gert-Jan van der Weijden - Stichting OSGeo.nl <gert-jan at osgeo.nl>:

First: I took the opportunity to change the subject of this thread to a less shouting version (CAPS LOCK and spam live side-by-side on my email-irritation-scale)

Second: Funny to see how the use of two different channels (mailing list vs. MailChimp) kind of reflect the different approaches to reach the -more of less- same goal.

Any expanding organisation / movement / community comes to a point where the classical channels (like a mailing list) reach their limits, 

and "new" marketing (yuch! marketing==ugly & bad!) channels & methods may help to stretch beyond borders. Which comes at a cost (as Maxi tries to tell, I guess).

Food for thought for the Board face2face meeting in January (and for the entire community) to determine 

- what our goals are

- what our values are

- and how these two compare to each other.

Kind regards, 

Gert-Jan

Van: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] Namens Rob Emanuele
Verzonden: dinsdag 15 december 2015 21:51
Aan: David Bianco
CC: OSGeo Discussions
Onderwerp: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4GNA - SOMEONE IS WATCHING YOU :-o

Hey David,

The emails on the mailing list were cultivated by past FOSS4G NA attendees, people opting in in other ways, and from lists that were given by members of this and last year's committee. If we're spamming people who didn't opt in, it is not intentional and apologies for the spam (the world certainly doesn't need more spam). We'll take a look at the list moving forward to try to prevent from sending emails to anyone who didn't opt in.

Thanks,

Rob

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 2:48 PM, David Bianco <me at davidbianco.net> wrote:

I believe MailChimp has policies against adding emails to your list without a user's authorization.

http://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015, at 10:16, Rob Emanuele wrote:

Thanks for pointing out that it wasn't yet posted to OSGeo-Discuss, I just posted it.

There's a one-click unsubscribe button from that mailing list, sorry for the spam!

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 12:31 PM, Massimiliano Cannata <massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch> wrote:

Just a funny note...

Nice to see that LocationTech has a FOSS4G email (!!!! WOW!!!!!) 

and..... 

that all the link on the received e-mail are connected with my user_id (I have one????? Yes) 

and.... 

that they are tracked (!!! without inform me !!!) 

and... 

that I have been added to a list that i'm not subscribed.... (http://mailchimp.com/about/mcsv/)

But...

Where did they get my e-mail from?

why thy didn't simply post the news to the discussion-osgeo list?

what do they want to track?

If you want to see the FOSS4G-NA without been traced here is the link https://2016.foss4g-na.org/

#SPAM #NOT-SO-FAIR #LIKE-MICROSOFT-THAT-SPY-ME #SCARY

Best,

Maxi

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Dipartimento ambiente costruzione e design

Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana

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Istituto scienze della Terra

Dipartimento ambiente costruzione e design

Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana

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