[Osmf-talk] Funding of iD Development and Maintenance
Allan Mustard
allan at mustard.net
Wed Aug 5 12:15:41 UTC 2020
*Dear Mateusz, et al,*
*Responses inline below:*
On 8/5/2020 7:27 AM, Mateusz Konieczny via osmf-talk wrote:
> First good step what be to review what happened with other projects
> in a similar position.
>
> Has anybody did such analysis? I am aware that our project is quite
> unique,
> but avoiding WMF failure mode would be nice, failing in exactly the
> same way
> with the same steps would be really sad.
*So far in my analysis OSM appears to be unique, but I am continuing to
search for analogs that may present lessons learned. This circumstance
is why the Board is proceeding deliberately, cautiously, and in full
consultation with the community. *
> Has anyone checked how Wikimedia Foundation ended in its current state
> and what was root cause of problems?
*From my perspective it is pretty clear. Wikimedia Foundation put no
limits on its growth. That is why the OSMF Board is discussing what the
outer boundary of growth and our budget should be. We view unrestricted
budget growth as a risk factor.*
> Again, I am aware that people probably disagree on what was the root cause
> but at least attempting to learn on mistakes made by others seems like a
> good idea to me.
>
> Also, is anyone aware about other projects similar to OSM and Wikimedia?
*There are other crowd-sourced projects but none directly comparable
that we have found. If you or anyone else knows of a comparable project
we could examine, please tell us.*
> After excluding software projects where sponsors directly decide what
> kind of features will be funded I am not able to find anything else, but
> probably other project also exist.
>
> Aug 5, 2020, 13:04 by joost at osmfoundation.org:
>
> 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
> <mailto:gravitystorm at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 4 Aug 2020 at 09:42, Mateusz Konieczny via osmf-talk
> <osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> <mailto: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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