The OSM US Charter Projects program provides a long-term home for significant projects in the OSM ecosystem. MapRoulette and OSMCha have been Charter Projects since 2023, which provided both projects with a fiscal home and infrastructure support. In 2024, a significant donation enabled the steering committees to hire a full time engineer to support the projects. This enabled major technical investments in both applications, such as an overhaul of OSMCha’s backend data pipeline that made OSMCha significantly faster and more reliable.
In August 2025, funding for development of the Charter Projects ran out, which meant the end of the dedicated Charter Projects Engineer position, and forced us to place MapRoulette and OSMCha in maintenance-only mode. OSM US has continued to pay for hosting costs for these projects out of the OSM US budget, but both applications also need ongoing maintenance and development to remain reliable and improve over time.
After discussion with OSMCha’s creator Wille Marcel, and with MapRoulette’s creator Martijn van Exel, we’ve decided to transition OSMCha and MapRoulette from Charter Projects to OSM US Programs. This will allow OSM US to allocate a portion of our core operational budget to support the maintenance and development of both projects.
What’s the difference between a Charter Project and a Program? In short: Charter Projects operate with significant autonomy. They have steering committees, separate budgets, and fundraising expectations. They’re designed for tools that can sustain themselves through dedicated sponsorship. Programs, on the other hand, are initiatives that OSM US runs directly. We manage them as part of core operations and fund them from the general budget.
For MapRoulette and OSMCha, this means:
- the Steering Committees of both projects will be dissolved
- OSM US staff will manage both projects’ roadmaps, informed by community feedback
- development and maintenance will be funded from OSM US’s operational budget
Both applications will remain open source and free to use.
If your organization relies on MapRoulette or OSMCha, we’re asking you to become an Organizational Member of OSM US. Membership dues directly fund the staff time that maintains these tools, along with our other programs and services. We cannot continue providing free, high-quality tools to the OpenStreetMap community without organizations choosing to invest in their maintenance.
Individual mappers can support our work through Individual Membership, and everyone is welcome to join the #maproulette and #osmcha channels on the OSM US Slack if you have questions or suggestions about either project.
Thanks to Wille, Martijn and everyone has contributed their time to the development of these incredible tools over the years.
