[OSM-dev] New database server

[Paweł Paprota]

On 05/21/2013 04:08 PM, Serge Wroclawski wrote:
> This is why the org needs a structural change, to give someone the
> authority and resources to oversee projects like this.
>
> Without this, the OWG is stuck ordering more hardware.

Reluctant +1 from me though I am sure this is not a popular view ("we 
don't want authority" and all that)... I can only say from my own 
experience what I was/am trying to do with OWL/history tab/whatever you 
call it - in itself not a trivial task but on the other hand the 
challenges with the overall architecture (both logical and physical) are 
at least at the same level (if not above!) of complexity.

And what I can tell you is that people in OSM (I mean admins here) are 
very supportive and open to changes. I love this in this project that I 
did something and I had/have the opportunity to get it into production. 
Sadly, I simply don't have enough time to finish it to the extent that 
it is acceptable (to me, not to mention others/admins) to consider it 
for production use.

So I think your statement is 100% true but I think the main problem is 
that there are no people or/and no money to do this. Think if you were 
the person that would need/want to do this work. It most definitely *is* 
a full time job for at least a few people - service like OSM doesn't run 
on rainbows and good wishes. And *changing* how it runs, i.e. changing 
the fundamental architecture or introducing some kind of load balancing 
or whatever is an *enormous* task.

In my opinion it is clear that this kind of work will not be done by 
volunteers - it is just too much interconnected stuff that needs to be 
handled properly, not to mention operations around all of it.

How to handle that - I have no idea... other than paying people - that 
would be the obvious (and IMHO surefire) solution. Of course the other 
question is whether there even are people (among current admins 
ideally?) who are willing to "sacrifice" (part of) their professional 
careers to work for some time on OSM - not sure. But I think at this 
stage and level of complexity as OSM has right now there is only one 
solution - as you said - structural change. I would put it more bluntly 
- right people + money for their time is the only way forward.

Paweł