Hi Fortean,
Thx for the reply. It seems you have a lot of knowledge on the subject.
But I can image this/you 
can a bit “threatening” 
for an enthusiastic (mainly technical?) group of people that are currently very busy creating their new product with all the best intentions.They probably have a pile of technical work still to do and maybe worried at the moment to take on the full fledged risk assessment wow you are stating.
But anyways, with these posts the think process is starting, I hope we can make a pragmatic and common sense approach. I see a lot of products becoming overly expensive and cpmplex because of all the regulations and legislation around it pushing it way beyond the 80/20 rule into a quality level that is maybe never needed.
that TTN consists of a kazillion entities
Not sure if this is correct. Isn’t The Things Network (TTN) just that group of enthausiastic people? Maybe you meant to refer to IoT or Lora?
So maybe scope is not as big as we think and can we start with a reasonably small scope (TTN back-end and gateway software?) that can be overseen.
I am no expert on the topic but willing to give my input/help if needed/wanted.
Regards,
Jeroen