[Doctor_Fegg]

Sure. I think the point is that these aren’t OSM contributor “signups”, they’re Foundation memberships. The Foundation is not as big a deal in OSM as it is in Wiki(m|p)edia because the project is intentionally low-budget and hands-off.

[sp8962]

Even that is not really comparable. The WMF does not actually have any members, and only has a superficial pseudo democratic shim (if that is good or bad is a different discussion though).

The "alarm" is caused because concerted action of roughly 10% of the OSMF membership could easily tip the current wobbly balance one way or the other, and there is no guarantee that the current "hands-off, low budget approach of the OSMF would survive such an upheaval.