Is there really a huge difference between what a person [any gifted hacker with a free weekend] can do with a relational database such as postgresql and say a database such as freebase or um kowari? I mean is that really the barrier?
At the end of the day you're just storing facts of some kind; you describe a feature, it has some aspects, it may have relationships. You can always implement RDF like data-stores on top of relational databases anyway.... heck this is what Chris Goad @ Platial did... building a very sophisticated RDF datastore on top of PostgreSQL... taking advantage of both spatial predicates AND arbitrary attributes and relationships per object. I don't see 'database' as a barrier anyway... I pretty much agree with Sean that it's more about improving user interfaces and features like that; soft features - not really the big metal features... which are actually pretty awesome. We can throw stones at OSM for things it does not do well, but they are in > the trenches making it happen. OSM does indeed rock. I believe MapMaker is just going to accelerate the innovation pace. From > that perspective competition is always good - just have to wonder if > Google's Herfindahl-Hirschman Index is getting a bit high. > :-) - me
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