On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 11:04:03PM +0100, Tom Hughes wrote: > > On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 09:27:42PM +0100, Tom Hughes wrote: > > > We only decided to rev the API at the hack weekend yesterday. > > Yes, that sums up the problem quite nicely. > Forgive me if I'm being thick, but what exactly is your point?
My point is that if you are looking from the outside in, OSM is seemingly not really interested in communication that encourages casual development contribution. First, the hack weekend could have been announced on dev. Second, I don't think it would have been a stretch to post a heads up again a few days before saying this is what we are likely going to talk about. And last but not least, introducing a new API should not be considered as a trivial change, even if you estimate the changes 'are going to be only minimal'. Look, you guys were all at the hack weekend and I don't blame you for wanting to go forward. But from my POV, all I see is a threat 'better be ready before mid may or we slap a nice cute icon on your software -does not work with 0.6 API-'. And without actually being there, no way to assess if that is in any way realistic. 50% of the previous thread on the future of Potlatch was in essence a lament on how difficult it is to build a community of developers. It isn't difficult, only you guys are just not putting the effort in to make it happen. And all the VC capital in the world will not help that. Look at the difficulty even established companies have creating a community. It is never about (lack of money) but always about openess, inclusiveness and communication. All it would have taken in this case was 3x5 minutes for the necessary posts on dev@ to make us feel part of something instead of a change that gets decided and dumped in half a month. Bonus points for some people blogging during the hackweekend. It's really that simple. cu bart _______________________________________________ dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dev
