Hi, > I don't think OSM provides any services that the public should consider > "stable" in the sense of "99.999% uptime, transaction guaranteed or your > money back". The closest might be the API server, but even that could > possibly go down as has been described before.
I'm NOT talking about a 99,99999%-I'll sue you if you don't deliver-guarantee. I know that this is not possible to deliver for an open source project. What I am talking about was _the aim_ and _the strong intention_ of keeping a certain API and service up and running for a time that you commit to. I know that there can be power outages, lack of manpower or whatever obstacle. That is all understandable and natural. The only thing that I'm asking for and that I think should be easily deliverable is the communicated intention of keeping APIs stable for a communicated amount of time. And that there is a communication channel that I can subscribe to that informs me about deprecation of APIs soon enough before. When I release a stable version of Marble I give no guarantee that running this version of Marble will not toast your cat. I'm also not giving any guarantee that it wouldn't crash. But by releasing a stable version of Marble I publically announce: here is something that you can use with least danger of crashes. I did my best to prevent crashes and I will surely do my best to keep APIs stable. That kind of commitment is what I'm asking for. Nothing more. > OSM is about the data itself, not the services around it. The services > available on the website and wiki are there because someone thought it > would be a nice way to help debug or otherwise improve mapping and map > data quality, not to provide a service to external users like KDE, > Microsoft, Google or anyone for that matter. I could exchange "data" for "Free Software" and it's clear that OpenStreetMap's position is not at all different from the one of any other Open Source project. > The bottom line is: if you want a stable service, run it yourself. That's > why the data is under a relatively free and open license. With the same attitude I could say: You want a stable KDE or Marble release? Check out a development version of the software, compile it and make it stable yourself! Works nicely in theory .... Best Regards, Torsten _______________________________________________ dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
