On 6 July 2010 09:48, Oliver (skobbler) <osm.oliver.ku...@gmx.de> wrote:
> > >As I said in my email it's > >straightforward to make plans for the future without needing a "goal". > >These plans can, and should, be based on what's happening, and > >therefore what we plan/expect will happen in the future. > > Absolutely in regards to plans, I just said that it should be triggered and > facilitated by the board to coordinate with other activities like funding, > for which a certain level of planning is a prerequisite rather sooner than > later. > > I do not agree that there doesn't need to be goal or vision. If I interpret > your recent mail to sourceforge correctly you see OpenStreetMap as "host > for > mapping projects". In this case the goal or vision would be something like > to "facilitate and encourage the creation maps for what purposes > whatsoever". Something like this would give people an umbrella and a better > understanding of what OpenStreetMap is about - and especially to > communicate > the project to the outside world. If you would ask ten people today what > openstreetmap is about you would get ten different answers, that is what > you > can also see from this thread. > Hello, That's actually one of the biggest strength of the OSM community to have 10 different visions of what OpenStreetMap is. The way OpenStreetMap has moved so far has been very beneficial to the vast ecosystems that we are now catering for. Everyone is seeing something different from the "map" as a map is something very personal and can be used in so many ways. Does that mean we should stop people doing orienteering map under the pretense that it is adding to much "useless" data? ( http://www.oobrien.com/oom/ ) Does that mean we should not import trees in towns like Girona? ( http://osm.org/go/xu1ff...@- ) Does that mean we have to stop mapping zoos, arboretum, .... ? Does that mean we have to stop doing humanitarian work too? Should we focus only on streets, streets details, etc... ? Each use of OSM is perfectly valid and no priority over another one. I think we are past the time where streets were the only thing that mattered. While I agree about the need of better communication, I think we should instead show everything we can do with OSM, whether routing, reverse geocoding, geocoding, specialized map rendering (Bikes, Roads, map for the blind, orienteering maps, etc...). OSM isn't just a replacement for TeleAtlas or Navteq. It is something in its own class now. I can understand why we might want to have the world covered in roads and have perfect addressing, but a crowded sourced project doesn't work that way. You can get a software open source project relatively focused (that will never stop people from adding non expected features), but this is not possible in OSM. You can of course try to do Week of France, where you get people to map a specific area, giving thematic for all those hungry mappers wanting to do something; you just can't direct them to do something in particular. Haiti is such an example: not everyone started mapping Haiti suddenly. Emilie Laffray
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