Hi, > [warning - long ponderous e-mail follows!]
I don't really see much of a problem with mutliple Flash editors being available. If they get something done that's better than Potlatch, why then it's good for all is it not? In general I have a problem with the built-in "uniqueness" of Potlatch or anything that might replace it; Potlatch is "the" OSM editor, the one that comes up if you click "edit" on the main OSM page. Until now Potlatch has enjoyed this privilege because there was no other suitable editor. If there are many competing editors - which one will get the "pole position" on osm.org? The editor and the features it supports will always very strongly influence what people map and how they do it. With JOSM, the concept is reasonably open; anyone can compile and run their own JOSM and make it available to third parties (as anyone using JOSM will not have difficulties running a program obtained from somewhere else), and plugins can be written and distributed. So even if JOSM were the only editor around, its grip on what people map and how they do it would not be very strong, since anybody with, say, an interest in turn restriction relations could provide a plugin that would make them editable nicely. Correct me if I'm wrong but Potlatch is, and any AS3 replacemend would be, a much more controlled environment, where the user has much less say in what editor and what features they want - you cannot simply run your own version of the editor against the live API, nor can you have local plugins or so. So that's the one doubt I would have - it must not come to CloudMade dictating what's behind the "Edit" tab on openstreetmap.org. But that could easily be alleviated by creating a set-up where *anybody* can operate an OSM editor on their site. In fact I would prefer that even now; give the user a choice whether his "edit" tab leads to Potlatch on RichardF's host or to the AS3 flash editor at cloudmade.com or the 100% javascript editor from crschmidt (or maybe even the JOSM applet), and anybody who thinks their editor is even better may add it to the list. If this core issue is resolved - i.e. the osm.org web site does not specifically endorse one editor and fail to list others - then I'd really say competition is good for all of us. I could imagine that if anything suppresses creativity in the current setup, it is not the fact that you use AS1; it is the fact that anything anybody wants to do has to be run by you and/or the people with [EMAIL PROTECTED] and only if you say yes then it gets into "the" editor, whereas with a project that doesn't depend on integration with the osm.org site (like Merkaartor or JOSM), you can simply try out something and offer it to people for immediate live use, even if the maintainer has completely different plans and doesn't like the concept. (But then again, look at the one-digit number of developers even with JOSM and Merkaartor... so don't excpect a boost if you make Potlatch less monopolistic.) > Part of me thinks that the most important thing is that Potlatch is > still available and users are offered the choice. Part of me thinks, > well, if there's going to be a new Flash editor, there's no point in me > doing any development on Potlatch from today forward. Part of me wants > to say "well, screw you" and walk away. And part of me wants to take > CloudMade up on its OSM Grants scheme (http://blog.cloudmade.com/) and > say, ok then, I'll announce a medium-term feature freeze, take a few > weeks' holiday, learn AS3 and recode it for a large amount of $$$. I'm > utterly stumped and would welcome suggestions. As an OSM community member I would like you to continue with your work and someone else do an AS3 editor for CloudMade, and then I want them both available on osm.org so that I can choose the one I like best (or the one that runs with my hardware/OS best, ot whatever). If you stopped working on Potlatch altogether, or if you re-did Potlatch in AS3, then that would leave me (the user) with less choice. Diversity is good. If I were in your shoes however, I might go for the $$$. $$$ is also good. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
