On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 11:56 AM, woll <[email protected]> wrote: > > Is the idea that this demo will become the 'official' OSM routing system? > From the intro post, I can't quite make out if it is going to appear on the > OSM home page, or it is a 'private' demo. > > I know very little about the details/history of the various routing systems > that use OSM, and nothing of the background to this functionality appearing, > but why choose YOURS/Gosmore instead of any of the other "non-commercial" > OSM-based routing systems? > > For example, I have used another OSM-based router that already has good > routing instructions and loads of options, so would appear to also be a good > contender. I'm not advocating a particular one, but would be interested in > hearing a bit about the background of why YOURS was chosen, so I can learn a > bit about such things!
"Official" is seldom clear in OSM. "Default" may be more apparent. The real advantage and real strength of Nick's demo is this. Nick built it and then made it work. Then found a way to demonstrate it to all of us. He did a lot of that over time; his routing has been running elsewhere for a while. Then he worked with the admin / server team to find a way to demo it without impacting performance on the main db and tile servers. This looks like a pretty good example of the Just Do It approach that has led to other successes in OSM. SteveC's original concept; "I'll map my neighbourhood, you map yours, soon we'll have a great map of London ^W The World". imi's original work on josm, RichardF's continuing work on Potlatch 1 & 2, OJW's first moving map, Andy & Dave's OpenCycleMap, Etienne's XAPI, Blars' TRAPI, Artem's Mapnik, the list could be endless. (I know I've missed key stuff. Not necessarily in chronological order. Apologies) The level of community participation in these milestones varies, and inspiration comes from so many conversations with others, dreams shared over drinks and pig-headed arguments. But it boils down to this. There is an idea, followed by directed action, then it is shared with the community. And the community decides the default, or what passes for "official". It may end up on the main page. It depends. Some say OSM "needs" routing on the front page to be "taken seriously". Others say putting user services like routing on the front page commits too many OSM resources to users, rather than contributors. In between, we've seen that each time another user-facing service appears for OSM, contributors make the data better so that it can take advantage of those services. Rendering, specialty rendering, sibling-site routing, and error-checking sites are all examples of new services improving OSM data through feedback. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
