Hi Brad,
I have to take responsibiility for everything that's happening with QLandkarte.
I have to honor wishes of
users and I have to foresee the consequences if I start to integrate a service.
And later on I have to suffer
the consequences if users abuse a service or something changes. Whatever
happens! It will hit my desk
and I have to deal with it. Not the users wanting it, nor the users abusing it.
There are always two sides of a feature. QLandkarte has a very flexible system
to integrate streaming
maps of all kinds. That's why we could integrate Bing maps, using a completely
other tile scheme than
TMS, without adding code to QLGT. Just by writing a XML specification with some
scripting embedded. This
is great! And there is nothing wrong with it.
But you can use that mechanism as well to query the map servers of companies
that are obscuring their
tile URLs just to prevent that everybody is using their service. That is the
other side, the dark side.
As I can not controll how users use the service I am not happy to send my
business card in form of a user-
agent string. In fact my general rule to deal with it is: Send as less
information as possible. If the servers
responds it's ok for me. If not, drop it. My resources are limited. I do not
fancy cuddling single services.
Now for OSM and those links in the streaming map tab. I never was happy to
integrate TMS maps in QLGT.
My point of focus are offline resources. However a user, it was Mark, started
to send patches using the
OSM server and the one from OpenCycleMap. The code at this time was far from
flexible and somehow
the idea poped up to use the OSM server as default to show something different
to new users than a pus
yellow empty plain. That is how those links went statically into QLandkarte. A
decision I regret.
The stuff evolved. Mark lost interest. I had to rewrite the complete WMS and
TMS map handling to get out
of the inflexibility. One day Fabrice had the idea to play with PHP scripts and
SOAP. Resulting in the version
query and the "File -> Load Online Map..." function. Martin voluteered to take
care of those files as good as
his limited resources allow. I think this is a nice service. Far from perfect
and professional, but still a point for
rookies to start with.
And it changes the situation. Those embedded links aren't necessary anymore.
Dropping them is just
overdue. Now a change of a servers won't affect the code of QLandkarte in any
way.
Thus the only thing that happend is, that just one service dropped out of the
catalog of maps, because it
requires information about the user-agent, which I do not want to supply
lightheartedly as a default. After all
it can be spoofed and some funny person can use it for misschief of any kind,
resulting in complains that I
have to deal with.
Now what brings the future? I can add a new tag to the XML sheets defining the
user-agent if wanted. By
that users can decide what string to send. But that is probably not what the
guys at OSM really want. And
if I start that it's just a matter of time until someone asks to add another
field of the header as option. Thus
I could add tags <rawheader>, where you can define whatever you like to see in
the header. Now
responsibility kicks in and I have to foresee what misschief can be done by
that and if it is responsible to add
that stuff.
As usual I would prefere the most generall way of implementation, as it solves
the problem of sending
whatever is required at once. But it's hard for me to judge the consequences.
And this is right the state of
decision I am in and I will take as much time for it as I think I need.
In the meanwhile I encourage everyone to use the alternative servers and to
contribute URLs of other
servers. Just look at the ones we already added. They implement quite nice
ideas. And I am sure there are
alternative TMS maps for every corner of the world. Let's find them and give
them a chance to be
acknowledged.
Additionally you are welcome to supply alternative soultions to the problem.
But a simple "Oliver shut up
and add that string because we require it" will not do.
Oliver
> I personally do not see the issue. What OSM is requesting is very
> reasonable. I appreciate the hard word you've done on this application,
> but forcing the occasional user like me to figure this out and add this
> in is not a good idea in my opinion.
>
> On Mon, 2014-02-17 at 20:55 +0100, Oliver Eichler wrote:
> > But the best part: The map definitions are no secret and easy to
> > understand. Thus if you look at one you can write your own.
> >
> >
> >
> > Which boils down to: The more comfort, the less security and privacy.
> > No surprise on that either. :D
> >
> >
> >
> > I personally would prefere if everyone takes care of the online maps
> > themselves. But I was constantly asked to make access easier and to
> > supply a collection of maps. Thanks to the work of Fabrice and Martin
> > this has been possible. It's not perfect as many things are not
> > perfect. And if you have a good idea to improve it you are welcome to
> > go ahead.
> >
> >
> >
> > Oliver
> >
> > > Am 17.02.14 17:16 schrieb(en) Grant Slater:
> > > > I guess you mean:
> > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_usage_policy Is
> >
> > > > there anything specific in the usage policy that you have an issue
> >
> > with?
> >
> > > > Or is the issue that there are usage terms?
> > >
> > > Just a side note - the suggested alternative "Load online map" in
> >
> > QLandkarte
> >
> > > GT connects the user to www.qlandkarte.org. The site even doesn't
> >
> > have a
> >
> > > privacy statement. It doesn't support https (only a 'server works'
> > >
> > > message), and it couldn't, as checking with openssl's s_client
> >
> > returns a
> >
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