Regardless of the team size, I say simplify as much as you can so you can dedicate your resources customizing what makes their business special. You mentioned a PBX system and no infrastructure, this makes me think you talking about Customer Management. It sounds like you’re documenting as you go, fantastic. Maybe loop in a noob time to time to review the documentation or have a Q&A that reifies the docs. Best of luck!

I think a concern for the business is whether other people can help maintain the system. As such don’t go too custom and roll your own. Take things like nextcloud and see if you can fit the requirements by bolting on a few docker services. Keep it simple by using “appliances” where it makes sense (dedicated NAS?).

I lived through those times, this is different. The punishment for false hope is the lesson that things can always get worse.

We’re cooked because our leaders are pumping the AI bubble while crashing the rest of the economy. When that bubble pops those programmers are going to have to find a job in a nuclear sized crater of where the economy used to be.

I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

Yeah, translating “size of their contribution” to a dollar amount is going to be inherently political. If they’re leaving it open ended to let projects figure it out then that could go poorly…

Reading their solutions is interesting; wanted to call out the following because it plays nice if you don’t agree with their whole prescription:

Don’t dilute the Open Source brand. Post-Open will never call itself Open Source, because it has different rules. The Post Open license actually enforces that.