So while the thread subject and most of the discussion is about the use of the domain and about the fact that the site could be mistaken for OSM because it mimicks OSM: I am not so concerned with either of these points. After all, they’re trying to re-build the website in Python so looking as much as the original as possible is a design goal (and were it any different, people would say “you have a long way to go, pal”). I’m happy to chalk this up to a genuine communications problem; they wanted to make it look as real as possible and didn’t expect people to be up in arms about it. (Still, now they know people are unhappy, it would be good to fix the issue.)
The beef I have with this project is not so much one particular website or one particular domain, it’s the whole brazen mindset of “we are the next generation of OSM”, when everyone in OSM says, wait a minute. In my mind, that’s like if one of the current candidates for OSMF board were to start talking to third parties outside of the project claiming to be the next OSMF board chairperson even when their prospects of getting elected are minuscle. Some might applaud this as having stamina and not giving up easily; I think it is at best delusional and borders on actively misleading people. I’m half expecting a jubilant article in some Python periodical about how Python is going to be behind the world’s most important open geodata project “real soon now”…