On 11 April 2011 16:41, Ian Dees <ian.d...@gmail.com> wrote: > When Google turns Google MapMaker on in the US and Europe*, it will become > much harder to recruit new mappers to our community (that is already quite > small). Being passive about this issue means that OSM and its more-open data > will eventually be drowned out by Google's much greater marketing might.
(With apologies to the wonderful Slashdot troll team...) It is official; Netcraft now confirms: OSM is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered OSM community when IDC confirmed that OSM market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all online maps. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that OSM has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. OSM is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Neogeographer's comprehensive route-finding test. You don't need to be Gulliver to predict OSM's future. The hand writing is on the wall: OSM faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for OSM because OSM is dying. Things are looking very bad for OSM. As many of us are already aware, OSM continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. Mapping parties are the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of participants to the shinier Google (™) mapping parties complete with jelly beans and free massages. The sudden and unpleasant departure of long time OSM contributor Fake SteveC only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: OSM is dying. Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers. OSM founder SteveC states that there are over 500k mappers in OSM. How many active mappers are there? Let's see. The number of anti-ODbL posts on the OSM mailing lists versus those praising the OSMF in the strongest possible terms is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 12.33 active mappers. Attendance at a recent Google Mapping Party, cunningly disguised as a flash mob, was estimated to contain 100k disgruntled former OSM mappers. A recent article put indignant Germans who argue instead of mapping at about 80 percent of total OSM mappers. Therefore there are about -200k OSM contributors (adjusting for those who are demanding their data back). This is consistent with the number of incidents of drunk barge owners tripping over ropes and landing in the canal. Due to the Cyprus edit war, abysmal sales and so on, the Java Applet went out of business and was taken over by Pot Latch which makes another troubled map. Now API 0.5 is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house. All major surveys show that OSM has steadily declined in market share. OSM is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If OSM is to survive at all it will be among bearded hippies too behind the times to have discovered Waze. OSM continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save OSM from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, OSM is dead. -- -------------------------------------- Igaühel on siin oma laul ja ma oma ei leiagi üles _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
