<html><head></head><body>Nice piece!<br>Yves <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">Le 27 octobre 2020 10:57:51 GMT+01:00, Andy Allan <gravitystorm@gmail.com> a écrit :<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<pre dir="auto" class="k9mail">On Sun, 25 Oct 2020 at 22:51, Mikel Maron <mikel.maron@gmail.com> wrote:<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #ad7fa8; padding-left: 1ex;">So far we have one side saying we need to amend the AoA, and the other side (consisting, I note, of prominent employees of large corporations) saying that it's all fine, or it's too late, or we should have done it differently but let's run this coming election as-is. This doesn't fill me with confidence.<br></blockquote>That's not even accurate about the "sides". Nor about what I am saying, for one. This kind of suspicion is exactly the thing I'm worried about will gain steam with this hastily developed proposal. Sucks to see me and others painted this way.<br></blockquote><br>I don't want to cast aspersions about your personal integrity, or<br>motivations, or anything like that. Same for Mike. I've known you both<br>for too long, and too well, for that. But when we ask people who have<br>chosen to work for large corporations about the risks and behaviour of<br>large corporations, then your viewpoints are, necessarily, coloured by<br>your own positive personal experiences. The analogy of asking fish<br>what they think about the water springs to mind.<br><br>When all the animals in the forest get together for their annual<br>garden tea party, the elephants are of course invited too. They are<br>all nice elephants, they are wise and they are kind and they all mean<br>well. But a small mistake, a stumble or some over-enthusiastic teenage<br>elephant can lead to disaster for the whole event. And the elephants<br>are all nice, and honourable, and think well of themselves, but of<br>course the other animals are aware of the risks of having the<br>elephants at the party.<br><br>In fact, this analogy starts to break down when you consider the<br>actual sizes of the organisations involved, compared to the size of<br>the OSMF. Instead of 'all the animals in the forest' and a few<br>elephants, please imagine a solidary rabbit holding a garden party<br>alone on the savannah, with a tiny little rabbit-sized teacup in one<br>paw and a tiny little rabbit sized scone with cream and jam in the<br>other. This is the OSMF.<br><br>In front of the rabbit is an elephant. It's a nice and kindly elephant<br>but it towers over the rabbit. And this elephant is just one of a row<br>of ten elephants standing side-by-side. Each of those ten elephants<br>has 9 elephants in a line behind it, making a square of 100 elephants.<br>And there are three of these squares, and another 32 elephants<br>bringing up the rear. This is the size of the Facebook herd. The<br>Microsoft herd is even bigger: it has 6 squares of a hundred<br>elephants, and 74 more elephants besides. The Apple herd has 8 of<br>these squares, and another 59 elephants besides.<br><br>Now in each of these three herds, very few elephants have even heard<br>about the rabbit, and even fewer have any interest in the rabbit's<br>tiny little garden party. They have much more important things to be<br>getting on with. But again, even if we assume that every elephant in<br>every herd is entirely wise, generous, and acts kindly towards the<br>rabbit, just one small mistake or stumble and there will be a squelch<br>and one distraught elephant will have a tiny little bit of strawberry<br>jam on its foot.<br><br>Like it or not, elephant herds trample around, and corporations do<br>too. And if we lie down on the ground with our chins on the grass<br>beside our rabbit, and look up from its perspective to see all those<br>elephants, and the other herds besides, we would forgive the rabbit<br>for being just a tad nervous about the scones, and a tad wary when the<br>elephants suggest delay.<br><br>Thanks,<br>Andy<br><br>[1] For this analogy, the rabbit is a European rabbit of 1.6kg, and<br>the elephants are 6000kg African elephants. Average sizes from<br>wikipedia.<br>The sizes of the three companies mentioned are based on their market<br>capitalisation: FB $810bn, MS $1645bn, A $1984bn. All are major<br>corporate sponsors of OSMF, conference speakers, have production<br>products using OSM data, or all three.<br>A comparable financial size for the OSMF is hard to determine, but I<br>have used $650k USD as the sum of cash on hand in the 2018 financial<br>report. However, the cost to gain 51% of members' votes is<br>approximately $14k USD, so if you prefer to use that figure, the<br>elephant herds are around 46x bigger than described above. Sticking<br>with the $650k USD value, we have a conversion of $1m USD to around<br>2.46kg<hr>osmf-talk mailing list<br>osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org<br><a href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk">https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk</a><br></pre></blockquote></div></body></html>