Broadly I'm a big fan of this mandate. I worried that the EF had given up on decentralisation as an objective. This helps, but there are two things I want to highlight: 1. The mandate says very little about 'Ethereum the computer's decentralisation, and focuses only on the humans and surrounding protocols. 2. This mandate does not focus on costs, and forgetting that CROPS have costs will jeopardize these aims. Even if you have the most egalitarian and consensus-based development process. If two relays and a handful of US companies control fork choice, it kind of doesn't matter imo. I'd like to see the EF set guidance on what they see as sufficient decentralisation of the computers that make up the L1 itself. Are they aiming at a nakamoto coefficient of 5, 50, or 500? Are the validator set's withdrawal credentials sufficiently non-custodial? How much more does it cost to solo stake versus delegate? For point two; I'd like to highlight @lex_node's analysis of the mandate. The EF can't fund all of the investment CROPS objectives need. They say they'll favour supporting entities that need less EF support into the future. They say they are not a product company, but that they'll make sure there are intermediary-less products for everything. They say source-available licenses won't be tolerated, but also that freemium, open-core models are dangerous and liable to enshittification and should be cautioned against too. You can't have it every way, and if it comes to deciding between software that is free as in freedom, versus free as in no cost; I hope the EF can clarify which is more aligned with their mandate, and safer in the long term. (I don’t think its the no cost one, we have seen that in 20+ years of internet so far. If its free you're the product) If I conclude with what I would do given these points; I would 1) set measurable objectives, and publish ongoing data on Ethereum (the computer)’s decentralisation, and 2) to address the CROPS funding gap, I would pick Freedom > Free, and I would also draw attention to the fact that Ethereum the computer spits out about $1.5b per year annualised to keep itself running, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to support projects trying to direct a fraction of that into supporting CROPS-like goals for Ethereum. (@OctantApp and @thedaofund are steps in the right direction but philanthropy alone won’t suffice).