[Osmf-talk] Funding of iD Development and Maintenance

[Allan Mustard]

Andy, et al, out of the issues we are discussing in this proposal, what
decisions would be irreversible? 

The Board and those community members who have responded are well aware
of some risks, and the questions before us are to determine the risks,
assess those risks, seek mitigations for the risks we can possibly
mitigate, and build safeguards around all the risks we can identify.  If
there are specific risks that worry you, or that you think we have
missed, please spell them out explicitly--please don't just accuse me of
a lack of awareness without telling me of what I am unaware. 

Among the risks I worry about are loss of our two sysadmins, which would
leave us with none; loss of our maintainer of the default editor; system
failure due to inability to grow to meet demand, which would likely lead
to a project fork by companies who at this point need our data; and
control of programmers and developers by third parties rather than the
community and the Foundation that represents the community's interests. 
I, at least, do not consider risks such as these to be trivial.

cheers,
apm

On 8/13/2020 4:56 AM, Andy Allan wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Aug 2020 at 00:31, Allan Mustard <allan at mustard.net> wrote:
>
>> OSMF won't fail, simply because the "worst-case" scenario is reversion to the 100% do-ocracy of volunteers, which has its drawbacks but is doable, has been sustainable for nearly 16 years, and is very low cost.  That particular downside risk is very small, as in very close to zero.  The question is whether there are improvements to the platform within our reach, for which funds could be raised, that would not undermine the volunteer spirit of the OSM community and thereby to endanger the project.  The Board is listening to all voices, not only the loudest, and we encourage all with information and perspectives to share, to speak up.
> I'm unfortunately not reassured by your comment. If the head of the
> local council said "Don't worry, if this new dam doesn't work out as
> we intended, the worst-case scenario is we'll drain the reservoir and
> move back into the village" then I wouldn't be reassured by that
> either. Both show a lack of awareness that some decisions aren't
> reversible, and sometimes you can't simply go back to what you did
> before.
>
> Thanks,
> Andy
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