Hi,
On 03.08.2012 18:32, Alexander Zipf wrote:
Matthias mentioned in his answer that this is not planned yet, but in
fact I like this idea very much and certainly we would love to welcome
outside contributions.
I think this is crucial for the success of the project. If this is a
you can look but you cannot touch project then OSM users will have to
continue looking for something else, or build something else themselves,
and the OpenBuildingModels repository will remain an academic prototype
that dies out sooner or later.
I would like to use this opportunity to draw attention to the OSRM
routing engine which is also an university project; but the source code
has been released under an open license, and as anybody can see on
GitHub and associated forums, the project now has a life of its own,
with many outside people submitting patches and reporting bugs, even
adding features. OpenStreetMap hasn't yet got around to actually install
OSRM on one of their own machines but I'm pretty sure that's on the card
for the future. Not only is this open approach more useful to the
community as a whole - it also gives potential contributors the
certainty that they are contributing to something that lasts, and even
if the original authors were to turn their backs on the project because
of lack of funding, or interest, the project would live on. In contrast
to this, the (much older and in some ways pioneering) OpenRouteService
run at the Heidelberg Uni - by the same people now presenting
OpenBuildingModels - has been free to use, but closed source; nobody was
able to install it, run it, improve it, and now it is collecting dust
and being outshone by more innovative community approaches. This is sad
because OpenRouteService once was in a position where many could have
built something innovative on top of it and fed back ideas to make it a
solid, community-maintained project; instead, it was bottled up and
worthless to the developer community who were excluded from inspecting
and re-using the source code.
OpenStreetMap is getting more and more attention and we're having many
people working on 3D related stuff; having a repository for 3D data that
is somehow linked with OSM is something that I have heard different
people talk about, and sooner or later there is likely going to be more
or less one suggested approach for anyone who wants to add 3D building
data.
If both source code and data of the OpenBuildingModels approach are
accessible to all, then the OpenBuildingModels database might become
this database and prosper. If not, then something else will prevail, and
OpenBuildingMaps will be commited to history as a nice academic showcase
that somehow didn't catch on.
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33
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