[Osmf-talk] Google services (was Re: Treasurer's Report)

[Roland Olbricht]

Hi Courtney,

> Don't even get me started on why do we still use an antiquated
> communications channel when we have a perfectly good new one.

While GMail is currently used for the mail to @osmfoundation.org, it is
losing mail. Meanwhile multiple incidents. I have also seen similar
problems with GMail but outside the Foundation.

Independently, there are a couple of quirks between Google accounts,
GMail and Google Maps, so I (and probably some others) consider Google
services as unreliable. Not completely unusable, but caution is necessary.

As this is proprietary service, we have no control whether these problem
are ever fixed or other problems arise out of the blue.

Opposed to this, when I use Markdown in text files piggybacking on other
text processing services (online editor, eMail, VCS, whatever), I'm in
full control of the content. There is a wide choice of tools to render
the Markdown into printable (or screen pretty) documents. Keeping files
is a well-understood task since decades, so there is practically zero
risk that even any problem can happen. No one can withdraw access,
because a copy of the content is on a hard disk physically situated at
my desk.

This is the problem with Google services: we lose control, for no
important reason. In the meanwhile, various incidents have this moved
from a theoretical risk to a rare but real problem.

Best regards,
Roland