I'd been involved in OSM since its first few months (2004) but found contributing intensely frustrating. I wanted something where drawing a road was as quick as it was in Illustrator, which I was used to. Previously you had to create nodes, link them into segments, link those into ways, and manually add tags. Potlatch was a Flash app that allowed you to go click-click-click, choose "residential road" from a dropdown, and there it was - you'd added a road.
I wouldn't for a moment claim it was great code - it really wasn't. But it was the right thing at the right time for OSM. By 2013 people with money were starting to sniff around the project, and Mapbox got paid to build something better and more polished. I was frankly relieved because I'd had enough of defending the newbies against the self-described power users. Still, a significant part of OSM being where it is now is thanks to Potlatch, and I'm proud of that.
