Hi, This idea was suggested by another attendee at SOTM this year but I think it would definitely be a good idea from my own experiences.
To my mind, the biggest barrier to hobbyist, not-for-profit developers wishing to set up OSM-related web projects (apart from time, of course) is, and always has been since the early days of OSM, the cost of running a server to handle large amounts of data. With increased volumes of data it is even more the case now. It is certainly the biggest limitation on my own site Freemap and its associated projects, such as the augmented reality project Hikar.For around £25 a month I get quite a decent server but even still, I am constrained to only offering data for selected areas of the UK (much of England away from the urban areas, and all of Wales). I would imagine there are lots of other people in a similar situation, who would like to offer not for profit projects but are constrained by the costs of hosting. So I'm wondering whether we could, if enough people raise contributions, have an OSM "read only, hobbyist" server which could be used to host not-for-profit, open source (only) projects. it could be either global or just for the UK (or any other individual country). It could contain a copy of the OSM PostGIS database then developers could be free to host server side code which delivers that data in whatever format fits their own needs (GeoJSON, some binary vector format, or anything else). Obviously such a thing would cost but I'm wondering whether the funds could be raised? At the moment, assuming my work circumstances change, I could probably contribute £50 towards buying it in the first place (possibly £100 if it was a definite "goer") plus £10/month running costs. Seeing as I don't get any income it's unlikely I could go above these values. What do people think? Thanks, Nick
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