As a lurking OSM community member who has read many many tech articles that are factually wrong through no fault of the company and who has stood next to Steve Coast a number of times as he explained what CloudMade does, I feel the need to opine that this article is a reasonable balance of fact and analogy. Especially for a techblog that still uses the WordPress favicon.
I grant that those of you in Europe may expect a higher level of professionalism and correctness from your technical journalists, but here in America we are happy with minimal wrongness and a relatively easy-to-understand story that will interest readers and cause them to investigate further. Adding a comment to the end of these articles (blog posts) is one way to address this issue. jessica forbess On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Frederik Ramm <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > as an OSM community member, I'm taking offence at the following article: > > http://techpulse360.com/2009/03/10/startup-cloudmade-wants-to-be-the-wikipedia-of-maps/ > > The article says that Cloudmade "relies on its OpenStreetMap project", and: > > “This is going to be the map of the future,” says founder Steve Coast of > his company. “We’re the Wikipedia of maps.” > > This is of course wrong; OpenStreetMap is no Cloudmade's project, and > Cloudmade is not the Wikipedia of maps. > > Further down, the article suggests that Cloudmade money was somehow > related to mapping the world: > > "But it’s also a daunting task. The company raised $3.5 million from > Sunstone Capital, but, well, the world is a large place." > > And: > > "Coast says the goal is to give away the mapping data for free and > charge for services." > > Of course, there is no mapping data that Cloudmade could give away for > free because they don't own any. > > I know that the press always write what they want (or what they think > they understand) and not necessarily what you tell them. Also, to their > credit, the Cloudmade web page clearly and correctly states that "We > source our map data from OpenStreetMap, the community mapping project > which is making a free map of the world". > > However, this is not the first time that the OpenStreetMap project has > been confused with Cloudmade by the press, and I can hardly imagine that > whoever wrote that article did so without relying on Cloudmade > statements that somehow pointed in that direction. > > I would appreciate if Cloudmade PR people, especially in the US, would > take more care in explaining the situation to the press, or if that is > too much to ask, then at least refrain from misrepresenting the situation. > > If anyone is "the Wikipedia of maps" then it is the OpenStreetMap > project which exists independently of Cloudmade. A very tiny portion of > OpenStreetMap data is acquired during Cloudmade-sponsored events for > which the project is grateful, but that does not give Cloudmade the > right to act as if they own the project. > > I know that in the early days of the web, some access providers touted > their dial-in plans as if the web was theirs - "buy our package and get > access to all these cool sites". Maybe it is hard for the public to > understand, but an effort should be made to say that Cloudmade is an > access provider, not a content provider. > > I'll try to make it a habit to point this out in the comment boxes of > the relevant web pages if I see articles like that. > > Bye > Frederik > > -- > Frederik Ramm ## eMail [email protected] ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
