On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Nick Whitelegg <nick.whitel...@solent.ac.uk> wrote: > Richard Weait said, earlier" >>Having the OSMF provide commercial tiles is a bad idea. It would: >>- reduce services available to the community >>- hurt the community by competing against it > > Hi Richard, yes I can see there are some issues come to think of it. Just to > clarify BTW - my whole original post was really from the point of view of > commercial people helping out the community by funding the servers and > allowing community projects freer access to the tiles, not the other way > round, but I can see that if those commercial entities could start playing > the "we're paying for it, they're not" line.
Hi Nick! Some app developers have made donations to the foundation even after getting throttled or blocked. Some of them just didn't know that OSM creates all of this Hot, Fresh Data with volunteers and donations. And the donations are no-strings-attached. Donations go to the general operating finds for OSMF and don't exempt donors from the api and tile server usage rules that we all have to live by. I think that's something that the OSMF has done very well. I like that we all live with the same rules, whether we are donors or not. So, yes, commercial users are welcome to support the project in various ways; and they do. I think that it is important that all of that support continues to support the community as one. Donations should not be a "get out of jail free" card or a way to get special dispensation or bypass the line. Best regards, Richard _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk