Frederik Ramm wrote: > > OSM is not a competitor to Goole, Bing, or Mapquest. OSM is a competitor > to Navteq and Tele Atlas. We do have the resources to do that right and > we're using them. > This is probably what many of the technically minded long term members of the community want OSM to be (my self included), but...
Frederik Ramm wrote: > > Navteq and Tele Atlas have rubbish map web sites, if any, because it is > not their core competency to make cool map web sites - they are a > supplier to those who do. > Well, Navteq and Tele Atlas also don't have to attract many hundreds of thousands of volunteers to create their data, many of whom are likely not able to or willing to have to deal with tens of Gb of raw vector data to be able to benefit from the work they put in. Thus Navteq and Tele Atlas don't really have a direct interest in the public seeing them as particularly useful or relevant. This is rather different for OpenStreetMap. Now it is possible that OpenStreetMap can successfully outsource this process of turning its data into something useful to various other (commercial) projects not associated with OSM, but imho OSM must have a strong interest in that this feedback loop is tight enough that a) people know about the products and thus know the use of OSM, b) the products are sufficiently associated with OSM, so that people realise how to contribute back and c) that sufficient number of products are seen as a fair return and not exploiting mappers. If this isn't achieved, then OSM might simply not be able to attract enough mappers to create the high quality data it aims for. They'd then rather go to something like waze or google map maker who give them something back. Perhaps the most efficient way to achieve this is for OSM to offer some "end user" products itself, such as e.g. the main mapnik tiles or a map interface with routing, and play a role in the wider eco system of OSM data users, who knows. Perhaps, leaving the field entirely to third parties works even better. But the consequences of one choice or the another on the likelihood of being able to convince people that it is worth while to contribute new data to OSM is important to consider. That is why it is sometimes useful to listen to such well illustrated critiques as this one. They show how others, potential new mappers, view OSM, and highlight where OSM should either inspire to improve or at least aim to communicate better where else to get those needs satisfied. Of cause, many of the points of this critique actually concerned the data and its inconsistency in tagging, rather than the tools or style-sheets, and so it would be equally important for mappers to realise that perhaps inventing yet another tagging schema, even if it might locally be better, might not be particularly helpful as it wont be supported my anything. Frederik Ramm wrote: > > Anyone can make a cool web site showing off OSM data. > Well, that should better read, anyone who has the hardware resources, the technical skill and the necessary time available, can make a cool web site. But if only those contributed their data, we would probably have either a rather empty map, or one that is full of bots and government imports. just my 0.02$ of thoughts, Kai -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Response-to-A-critique-of-OpenStreetMap-tp5635020p5638454.html Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
