Frankie Roberto wrote: > Ha, well there's a contentious statement! If that were the case, then > why do we even bother with the Mapnik/Osmarender tiles? Surely they're > the ultimate form of doing "clever" stuff with the data.
Primarily so mappers can see what they've been doing, as a form of validation (and gratification). They're also a reasonable demonstration of what's possible using OSM data and various tools. The Cycle map is included to show that you can do more than "normal" street maps, but that's hosted elsewhere. > My personal view is that it's the XML view which is tag-agnostic, and > that the map and browse views are where we should be displaying the data > in the most useful, usable form possible. I think our browse pages could > be as good, if not better, than Google's "place pages" [1]. If you mean including extra, non-geographic info, I'd disagree. The point of the project is to collect geodata and allow people to use it in interesting ways, and that could include Google. I'd rather Google kept its place pages and based them on OSM data than we tried to compete. > Whilst I can understand the view that OSM should only be about gathering > and maintaining the data, and that we should leave building > user-friendly 'services' on top of it to other companies and > organisations, I think that we need some form of usable services (like > the map, and the browse pages) in order to show off the data and to > attract people to the community. To use Wikipedia as an example, they > seem to focus equally on providing a well-designed, stable, fast > encyclopaedia website as on providing a good editing experience and > community (despite the huge financial burden of running all the extra > servers). Instead of thinking of OSM like Wikipedia, think of it like the Linux kernel: We have lots of contributors to a very large whole, with a central site where all contributions are collated. That site may be where the product is created, but it shouldn't be where it's used. In the same way you wouldn't expect to have to log into kernel.org to use Linux, you shouldn't expect openstreetmap.org to provide every possible application of the data. Instead, we provide enough to make collection and maintenance of the data easy (and fun), and enough documentation to show people how to render their own maps/install a routing app on their handheld/extract POIs from the data for (reverse) geocoding. OpenStreetMap is Free in the sense of Stallman. You can do what the hell you like with it. You're limited only by your own ability, not by a licence agreement. If you don't have the skill to do it yourself, you can pay someone else to do it, but you still get the OSM goodness. What OSM (or more precisely the OSMF) isn't in the business of is providing free beer to all and sundry, which is what would happen if we tried to provide a reliable tile service to anyone who wanted it. -- Jonathan (Jonobennett) _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
