To me the article felt like one of those pieces you could read about Wikipedia in 2008, and largely a sensationalist recount of perennial discussions in OSM. Nothing new under the sun. Maybe I'm too old.
Anyway, it's always good to spark some wider and constructive discussions on the possibly overlooked basics of a large project. Speaking of which:
Paul Norman, 24/02/2018 01:22:
On 2/23/2018 10:32 AM, Stefano wrote:
Related to this, I wondered if the WMF could be interested in this request for support https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2018/02/19/osmf-request-for-proposals-data-ce...
[...] If the WMF were interested in supporting with hardware or rack space, I'm sure the OWG would be interested.
The hardware donation part is probably the easiest one. WMF has long struggled to find an efficient way to give away its extra servers, if I'm not mistaken. https://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/server-donation/
It would be easier if your racks ended up being in EvoSwitch AMS, I suppose. I can't currently see a list of spare/decommissioned servers, but you can contact WMF Site Reliability Engineering (cc some of them).
Federico