[Osmf-talk] Funding of iD Development and Maintenance

[Rory McCann]

4 of the 7 board members are from, and live in, the EU. 🙂 We're not 
totally ignorant of that.

Regardless, I'm sure we don't want to be horrible employers who want to 
fire people at the drop of a hat, like some US-style “at-will” employer.

On 13/08/2020 22:28, Mateusz Konieczny via osmf-talk wrote:
> See mail by Steve Coast:
> 
> "In parts of the EU it’s near-impossible to fire someone and can easily 
> take 6-12 months and an enormous legal effort."
> 
> 13 Aug 2020, 22:14 by osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org:
> 
>     Hiring someone for a permanent position.
> 
>     Firing a worker in Europe is extremely
>     hard compared to USA, in some cases
>     is not allowed to fire worker(s).
> 
> 
>     13 Aug 2020, 21:35 by allan at mustard.net:
> 
>         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>  <mailto: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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