Matěj,
On 12/16/14 2:02 PM, Matěj Cepl wrote:
The map data obviously must be collected by someone and OSM
data are suitable for use, though perhaps only once curated at
some level.
Sorry, I just don’t understand this sentence. “only once
curated” ??? -ENOPARSE
'curating' data is a common term for checking data, fixing errors,
finding mismatches, and generally not using a raw data dump but doing
some work with the data before use. Reports generally from people using
OSM data is that the data need work before use.
However, for users to get the data, they can not simply hit
the OSM servers due to usage terms of that project.
Again, I really don’t know what you are talking about. Could you
please elaborate? Obviously it would be better not to be a free
> rider and chip in to the OSM project some resources if Mozilla
> uses their servers (or to use some caching server), but
> otherwise legally I don’t think there is any reason not to use
> OSM servers. Or is there?
The OSM terms:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_Usage_Policy
Then, for a good user experience (not duplicating storage and
memory use), you *really* don't want different apps each
storing its own copy of the map data;
I smell overengineering … I think it is not crazy to expect that
most people will use just one mapping application. AFAIK,
Android doesn’t have any such mechanism either and OSMAnd works
just fine.
My conclusion arose from thinking hard about these issues as I was
coding a mapping app. As I considered how the various issues could be
resolved, and found the best resolution I could imagine, and then
considered how to maximize the benefit of that work for the benefit of
all users and developers, I reached a different conclusion from yours.
If all one wants is a single mapping app, then there are lots of
shortcuts one could use. If one wants to bring mapping to FirefoxOS in
general, then one might reach different conclusions.
So yes, my thinking may well be 'overengineering' from your point of
view. From mine, it seems like smart, modular design and maximizing
effectiveness of the work and resources going into the project. There is
actually a current active thread on the list looking for exactly the
kind of IPC system that I see being needed for sharing maps; that
confirms to me that this full 'over' engineering will come to the
platform eventually. A well designed app would be built for that future.
Unfortunately, the amount of work required for such an app makes it
unlikely to happen. Since there is no obvious way to monetize this work,
it is doubly unlikely.
Again, how is the situation different from OSMAnd?
OSMand seems to be selling an app to finance the servers for the
download data (and artificially limiting the 'free' app to ensure some
revenue). I also vaguely remember there being a libosmand API that gave
other android apps access to the data stored by osmand to allow broad
re-use of offline map data.
~adrian
P.S. your response does not read as coming from someone who undertook a
serious effort to read what I said and attempted to understand what I
was trying to express. That makes responding to you much less fun than
it could be.
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