Hi devs, the Nominatim search API has seen quite an increase in popularity in the last months. We are in principle happy to see you experiment with new and exciting uses of the API. However, there have been a few applications that have been overusing our servers making it increasingly difficult to keep up the service. Please be remainded that our services are running on hardware made possible through donations and that their capacity is limited.
To ensure that your search results will continue to be delivered promptly, a more ridgid enforcement of the usage policy will be put in place in the coming weeks. In particular, you should be aware of the following two points: The usage limits stated in the usage policy apply on an application base. That means if you are using Nominatim search services on a website or in a distributed or mobile application, then all your clients together must not produce more traffic than the stated usage limits. Users of the API must include either a customized user agent or a referer. Clients that fail to send an identification or only send a general-purpose user agent will be no longer permitted. The fully usage policy can be found at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim_usage_policy If you are a user of the Nominatim API, please check again that your software complies with the usage policy to avoid bad surprises. If you are a heavy user of the API, please look into alternatives like commercial providers or installing your own instance of Nominatim. Kind regards Sarah Hoffmann (part of the OSM sys-admin team) _______________________________________________ Geocoding mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/geocoding
