[Osmf-talk] Funding of iD Development and Maintenance

[Joost Schouppe]

Hi Andy,

We are in fact risk averse in the Board. It is just that the risk of doing
nothing was becoming larger than the risk of changing things. We are well
aware of the risks we introduce, and are always happy when community
consultations do bring up things we hadn't thought of before. We did not
-plan- to work on funding iD at this point. But we were presented with a
crisis and chose the least risky path forward: one where iD development is
safeguarded and pone where several organisations can balance each other out
(which is a step forward from having a single funder without any OSMF
involvement). While I do see us taking on a few more big issues in the
coming months, I expect most of our next steps to be focused on
consolidating. I hope we can do a second screen2screen meeting this year,
where a new risk analysis in the face of all the changes we're making would
be an important aspect. If you have suggestions for other methods to focus
on risk-mitigation, I'm all ears.

Best,
Joost



On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 11:28 AM Andy Allan <gravitystorm at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 4 Aug 2020 at 09:42, Mateusz Konieczny via osmf-talk
> <osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>
> > WMF basically failed, or at least it went poorly and situation continues
> to degrade.
> > Has anybody tried to write a history of what went wrong?
> >
> > I would prefer to be certain that we are not following in their
> footsteps.
>
> I think this is a key point. The road to a dysfunctional organisation
> is paved with a series of decisions that all seemed reasonable at the
> time.
>
> I'm becoming concerned that OSMF is striding quickly without fully
> reflecting on where it wants to go, and the risks involved. While I
> support the individual steps currently being taken (with microgrants,
> SRE, software funding, dispute panels) there's a risk that the whole
> is not the sum of the parts. And I'm also not sure if we're seeing the
> whole roadmap from the Board, since if new concepts continue to be
> announced at the current pace, the OSMF will be unrecognisable by the
> end of the year!
>
> I'm not averse to change. But I am averse to OSMF taking organisational
> risks.
>
> Because OSMF simply cannot fail. It holds rights on the database that
> are not and cannot be available to any other organisation. It holds
> the copyrights and domains. It holds the user accounts. If something
> goes seriously wrong with OSMF, there is no way to recover, and no
> other organisation can provide an alternative for these key concerns.
> So it's imperative that OSMF continues to function. But the more that
> OSMF adds to its remit, the more organisational risks are involved. So
> while I'm not advocating a bare-minimum do-nothing OSMF, I'm also not
> advocating a let's-try-everything-what-could-possibly-go-wrong
> approach either.
>
> I'd like at least for some reflections on the board as to what they
> are doing to consider and mitigate the risks in these new ventures,
> and what alternative structures (e.g. arms-length organisations, or an
> 'OSM-Development' local chapter) are being considered to insulate the
> irreplaceable parts of OSMF from any risks. I would hate to find that
> some unlikely-but-still-possible scenario in the future - whether
> 'organisational capture' by large funders, or an employee lawsuit
> draining the reserves, or disillusioned volunteers departing - being
> met with a reaction of 'Oh, we didn't think about that!'
>
> Thanks,
> Andy
>
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