> What We Don’t Know Yet
> Governance and decision-making: How decisions are made, who has final say, and how the community is heard
> Roadmap and priorities: What gets built when and how to balance competing needs
> The transition itself: How to bring in more support without disrupting what already works
In other words: they have no clue what to do next (https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/ankis-growing-up/68610/2#p-1905...)
Many community-oriented programs have failed after acquisition because they came out too firm, too decided, and too purposeful, only to realize the community is still skeptical and turning against them six months in.
Honestly, for a program like Anki, starting out by saying "we need to figure out what good governance looks like, as well as what might be agreeable and possible for everyone involved" is a much stronger positioning than coming up with something that may or may not fly to try make a strong first impression. Communities do not follow the conventional rules of American business.
From the posts, it sounds like the original maintainer was approaching the point where they'd just abandon it, so this overall seems like a better outcome than either abandonment or sale to a PE firm.
That remains to be seen. Many things are much worse than "abandonment" for completed software.
Knowing what they don't know puts them ahead of many organizations.
It seems more than a little bit careless to agree on a deal without having those very important things hammered out. What if there is disagreement about these?
Community focused organizations like this are hard to run without governance transitions. I think Anki brings value to the world and anyone willing to take on a leadership role in keeping it going should be given trust and grace to make the best decisions they can with the knowledge they have. I wish them luck.
Or: They don't want to force a specific governance model onto an existing community.
I have no deep insight here, but given the times I have seen a negative reaction from the community with ownership changes or similar, giving yourself time to figure out how to do things may actually be a good thing.
I actually really appreciate the honesty of this. Much better than undue confidence.