On 10/14/2010 8:07 AM, Milo van der Linden wrote:
Dear 41latitude,
I came accross your blog on "critique of OpenStreetMap".
http://www.41latitude.com/post/1310985699/openstreetmap-critique and
read it with interest. Some points are true, others need better
explaination and I think you misinterpreted some things.
Justin's written detailed critiques of Yahoo, Google and Bing maps
as well. As one of the people who encouraged him to write about OSM, I
think his criticism ought to be taken as constructive criticism.
Of course, you're right to point out that the community nature of
OSM means that different people and organizations can create their own
renderings. I've talk with Justin, for instance, about Cloudmade's
ability to render custom map tiles, and we're both really impressed
with that.
However, I'll say that the claim that "we don't have the resources
to do it right" is a "bad smell" that I often perceive around
organizations that are in a death spiral. Back when I worked in the
library field, it struck me that librarians were just conceding
everything to the likes of AMZN and GOOG. Making little effort to take
their fate into their own hands, I'm afraid that things are going to
continue to get worse for them.
It's better to say "we know we could do it better and we'll do
better in the future."
As for the licensing thing, I do believe that CC-BY-SA licensing
would allow OSM to join the 'giant component' of generic databases
(particularly centering around wikipedia) which would in turn let third
parties improve OSM. I am afraid that license proliferation could lead
to a number of 'data ghettos', eviscerating the disruptive power of
open data, thus granting control of the information future to Tele
Atlas, Google, Elsevier and other commercial organizations that don't
spend vast amounts of intellectual effort by hobbling themselves.
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