On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 9:21 PM, Frederik Ramm <[email protected]> wrote: > But to be honest I'd prefer for tile-making to migrate more into the hands > of users so they can choose whatever style they like, rather than everybody > making (different) demands on our showcase cartography. ... > This guy is clearly mistaking us for a map portal. Even if we had the money > to buy aerial imagery it would not be our mission to serve that to the > public; we're simply not interested. I'm a little tired of people like that > and I hope that by drastically reducing the amount of map on our front page > we will get rid of them. We are here to make good map data; we're not here > to indulge those who would like a map portal with all the bells and whistles > (and who, as someone else professed, cannot be bothered to fix data in OSM > when there are problems). > > In my eyes, we are not aimed at "map consumers". We are, to borrow business > terms, a producer or maybe a distributor, but we're not a retailer. Our > product needs a bit of pretty packaging and customer service added before it > can compete with the consumer friendliness of something like Google Maps; > such pretty packaging and customer service can be provided by enthusiastic > individuals, or nonprofits, or commercial entities - maybe even by other > open projects. But I don't see this on our plate.
Well, IMHO, this is a fundamental mistake. The best way to attract contributors is to provide a good product that they want even more of. I have friends who would probably contribute to OSM, but first they would need to *use* OSM, and it's not quite good enough for their needs. Why do people contribute to Google Maps? Because they use Google Maps. If the broader goal here is maximum possible uptake of free data, then we need to do everything possible to encourage that. Having artificial boundaries like "oh, we're just a map data project; tools and map servers are someone else's problem" is just wrong. Steve _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
