000001. DiTA as a Public Platform
Date: 2025-12-25
Status
Proposed
Context
DiTA addresses complex educational and institutional scheduling problems that cannot be efficiently solved by a single centralized service. The problem space inherently involves:
- heterogeneous institutions with distinct constraints,
- multiple categories of users (institutions, instructors, learners, supervisors),
- third-party computational solvers with diverse optimization strategies,
- optional auxiliary services such as data anonymization, validation, and enrichment.
A product-oriented or monolithic service model would:
- limit extensibility,
- constrain innovation to the core team,
- centralize trust and computational responsibility,
- and reduce scalability across domains and geographies.
To support an open ecosystem of participants, solvers, and services, DiTA must decide whether it operates as:
- a closed scheduling product,
- a managed scheduling service,
- or a public platform with an extensible service and solver ecosystem.
This ADR captures the decision to position DiTA explicitly as a public platform.
Decision
DiTA SHALL be designed, developed, and operated as a public platform, not merely as a scheduling service or product.
The platform characteristics are defined as follows:
- DiTA is a public platform accessible to all users.
- Membership and basic usage of the platform are free of charge.
- Advanced capabilities are provided via paid plans and services.
- Institutions and individuals interact with DiTA as platform participants, not passive consumers.
- Solvers and anonymization systems are first-class platform participants, not internal-only components.
Platform Participants
The platform serves the following participant categories:
- Institutions: schools, universities, academies, laboratories, sports facilities.
- Individuals: students, learners, instructors, teachers, supervisors.
- Service Providers:
- Solver services (internal and external).
- Data anonymization services (internal and external).
- Other future auxiliary services compliant with platform standards.
Revenue Model (Platform-Level)
DiTA revenue is derived from platform participation and service facilitation, including:
- Subscription-based plans for advanced features.
- Dedicated (private) deployments of the full DiTA platform for a single organization.
- Commissions on:
- rewards paid to solvers for packet resolution,
- anonymization services applied to packets,
- any external service executed through the platform.
- Direct revenue from:
- packet resolution performed by DiTA-operated solvers,
- packet anonymization performed by DiTA-operated anonymization services.
- Verification and trust services, including:
- identity verification,
- reputation and tiering systems,
- “verified” (blue-check) status for institutions, individuals, solvers, and external services.
At early stages of the platform lifecycle, DiTA SHALL prioritize adoption and ecosystem growth, and may operate largely free of charge until a sustainable service threshold is reached.
Consequences
Positive Consequences
- Enables a scalable ecosystem of independent solvers and services.
- Decouples core platform evolution from optimization and anonymization innovation.
- Supports diverse institutional privacy, trust, and deployment requirements.
- Creates multiple sustainable revenue streams without locking users into a single service model.
- Positions DiTA as infrastructure rather than a single-purpose application.
Negative Consequences and Risks
- Increased architectural and operational complexity.
- Larger attack surface and stricter security requirements.
- Governance challenges around third-party services and trust boundaries.
- Necessitates formal contracts, APIs, standards, and compliance mechanisms.
- Requires careful balance between openness and platform abuse prevention.
These risks must be mitigated through:
- strong architectural boundaries,
- explicit service contracts,
- clear governance and verification mechanisms,
- and future ADRs defining trust, security, and platform policies.