[Osmf-talk] Funding of iD Development and Maintenance

[Joost Schouppe]

Hi Andy,

By all means, don't just trust us - unfortunately getting elected to the
Board does not suddenly make one perfect.

Doing these consultations is in large part exactly for things to be brought
up that we might not have thought about. From your list just above, for
example, not including donations from individuals is probably an oversight.
It's not like we set out to exclude them.

Now when I say that we are risk averse, I don't mean to say we necessarily
thought about everything that could potentially go wrong. It's rather that
we were presented with a crisis and we found a way to turn this into a much
better situation than it was before. Instead of relying on a single
organization without any OSMF oversight, we now have a bunch of
organizations all working through OSMF. And that without touching OSMF core
funding; and doing it for something that we didn't do before (and hence
could stop doing if that were necessary).

That right now this massive success results in more (absolute and relative)
income from the corporate sector, seems like something we can address over
a somewhat longer term. Adding individuals to the mix would be excellent
(and I already saw people on reddit saying "ooh I want to donate to iD", so
there is potential). Diversifying our income was already on our radar, but
we simply started with the low hanging fruit.

I can't really comment on 1) myself, but on 3) I don't really see the
potential for disaster, and I'm personally pretty happy with how the
appointed Microgrants Committee works.

As the trust within the Board is growing, things are indeed moving a lot
faster. I think a lot of us on the Board feel like many of the things we
are tackling now were long overdue. There is a risk there, yes, that we try
to take on too many things at once and make a fatal mistake - or that we
burn ourselves out. Or that the community loses track of everything that's
happening. Still I personally feel that all the changes we are making are
going in the right direction, and that the risks of going slow are bigger
than the risk of moving forward. That said, I really do mean it when I say
we should have a second screen2screen meeting where risk analysis should be
an important aspect. But there still are a few other rather big issues
holding the project back that I would hope we can work on sooner rather
than later.

Is this helpful at all? Or were you looking for something entirely
different?

Best,
Joost

On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 3:05 PM Andy Allan <gravitystorm at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 5 Aug 2020 at 13:07, Joost Schouppe <joost at osmfoundation.org>
> wrote:
>
> > We are in fact risk averse in the Board. ... We are well aware of the
> risks we introduce
>
> Sounds great. Also sounds like you want us to just trust the board
> unconditionally.
>
> But I think the "verify" bit of the phrase "trust, but verify" is
> important too. So maybe you are all risk-averse, and maybe you are all
> well aware of the risks, but you need to share this with the members
> so we can consider everything properly.
>
> Thanks,
> Andy
>
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