Jean-Marc Liotier wrote: > Andreas Labres wrote: >> Patrick from talk-at found this by chance: http://openmaps.eu/ They >> seem to be reinventing the wheel, somehow... > > I sent their proeminent members (papa71, kepenu, KiVi, peter68, > Trackman and BigMick) a gentle enquiry through their forum's internal > mail system; that's the best I could do for lack of any other contact > option. We'll see if they reply.
I just received an extensive answer from Trackman (Zaka Ferenc <za...@elte.hu>) and he allowed me to forward it to talk@openstreetmap.org for further discussion. Please make sure you keep his address in the cc: field of your answers as he is not subscribed to this list. As he points out, license compatibility (cf. http://openmaps.eu/copyright ) is certainly the main issue for collaboration. There are also issues of technical, methodological and organizationals differences - but I believe they could be worked over with proper procedures and explanations. Licensing is the much bigger obstacle. Please read his explanations and tell us your thoughts about which possibilities may exist for collaboration between OpenStreetMap and Openmaps.eu and how we might get there. -------- Original Message -------- Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:23:51 +0100 From: Zaka Ferenc <za...@elte.hu> To: j...@liotier.org There is a gps map project in Hungary found at turistautak.hu (turistautak means 'hiking trails'). This project has been launched in 2003, so your question in the subject can be turned upside-down: why openstreetmap did not join to turistautak.hu at osm's launch time... :) So this is a joke of course, let's see some real answer. We're map editors at tursitautak.hu since 2005 (afaik this is the year when osm started). In 2006 january there was a need to have map of Transylvania a neighbouring region of us. So some member of turistautak.hu and geocaching.hu founded etp.hu a map project for Transylvania. Other members founded slovakiamap.hu - since they lived close to Slovakia... Both of them were topo-like maps but slowly became general-purpose maps. (As well as turistautak.hu became too... ) In the second half of 2006 we clamped these projects (except the root, turistautak.hu) into one and founded openmaps.eu. The main cause we didn't join to turistautak.hu was mostly technical: we wanted to try out some methods to share and edit maps, and to create various outputs. But we take over the map data of Hungary daily and integrate into omp's maps. As you can see, osm and omp is created roughly parallel in time, but if we look back to the root (turistautak.hu) we're "older" than osm. And we have different aims as we can see. - our primary aim is to create maps for portable gps devices. We have routable maps for gps equipments from the beginning (now they are searchable as well) - we focus on quality, not quantity. Your graph shows that osm have millions of track points but do you know about its accuracy and actuality? We're trying to create maps as accurate as possible, and we do not use every track we get, we use only what we're sure of quality about. And a less map area gives a bigger chance to control the actuality of map data. - we're less wiki-like: not anyone can draw into maps. Map can be edited only after a short training course where map editors learn a lot of rules how to draw maps. This is for quality, again. - osm develops general-purpose technologies (file format, compiler, etc). We use existing components where it is possible (mp format, mapedit, cgpsmapper, etc..) - omp is currently topo and road map as well but hiking-related things are more significant while osm is more road-like as we can see. Although we have somewhat different aims we've tried to collaborate with osm. We've contacted slovakian osm member but the conversation got stucked on licence problems (as i can remember). We're interested in cooperation henceforward. Please tell us something about the possibilities of cooperation from your point of view considering of the above. Here is our license to compare to osm's expectations. http://openmaps.eu/copyright Best regards, Trackman j...@liotier.org írta: > Trackman, > > liotier (http://openmaps.eu/user/2700) has sent you a message via > your contact form (http://openmaps.eu/user/3/contact) at Open Maps > Project. > > If you don't want to receive such e-mails, you can change your > settings at http://openmaps.eu/user/3. > > Message: > > Hello ! I am a member of the OpenStreetMap project, and one of us > noticed OpenMaps. OpenStreetMap creates and provides free geographic > data such as street maps to anyone who wants them to do whatever they > want with it. We feel that there is much similarity between OpenMaps > and OpenStreetMap, and we wonder why OpenMaps was started as an > independent project. Is there a specific reason ? We really wonder > why you decided to start what appears as a duplicated effort to us. > We would be happy if you could tell us about it. > > OpenStreetMap welcomes new ideas and new people of all kinds, and as > you can see on the statistical graph below, OpenStreetMap has reached > critical mass worldwide : > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats#Database_Statistics_-_Graphical > > If you feel like talking to us about anything, and who knows - even > about making our projects work together, please be sure to join the > discussions at talk@openstreetmap.org > > Message sent to papa71, kepenu, KiVi, peter68, Trackman and BigMick. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
