> Note that the current developers and maintainers of iD were not involved at this time, and I'm not even sure of any of the original devs are still with Mapbox.
At the time I contributed my first (‘Mapbox’s first’) PR to iD, the only previous developer was Richard Fairhurst and the codebase was strictly a proof-of-concept. He continued to be involved for a little while and we had very open lines of communication (and still get along to this day)!
Out of the original developers, about 2/4 are still at Mapbox, but the other two don't contribute to it anymore, for the obvious reason: it's utterly thankless, a guaranteed pit of abuse regardless of how you do it. It's hard to find the sort of therapist-saint-developer-warrior who can work with the OpenStreetMap community without losing their minds.
> What is different with iD is its privileged position
iD's position was earned. I was there, as we worked through months of community process and testing and adjustments to acquire the near-impossible consensus that the OpenStreetMap community desired. Saying that it replaced P2 "in due course" and now has a "privileged position" forgets that the community, not us, made the decision and pressed that 'merge PR' button.