Hi,
On 12/15/2011 03:45 AM, Martijn van Exel wrote:
innovating
leveraged
gamification (GMM has 'superstar mappers' I believe)
leverage
I think you're reading too much off the blurby stuff ;)
Thing is: Google has a gazillion more $$$ than we do, and they can buy
all of Peru to do UI work for them if they please. They can, if they so
desire, buy millions of hardware devices and ship them across the world
for mapping, or they can set up a helpdesk in India where every single
GMM contributor gets personalised support around the clock. They can do
all this and more, and trying to compete with them on such a level won't
work. (Someone said we should aim to be #1 online map provider but if
people were to request from us even a fraction of the tiles that Google
serves we'd blow several fuses.)
I think it is inevitable that there *will* be more GMM contributors than
there are OSM contributors and it would be foolish to fight that (and
foolish to even set oneself the goal).
In the long run, at least if Google doesn't lose interest or produces
major cock-ups, OSM *will not* be the "easier to use" collaborative map.
It will have a very hard time to be "as easy to use" as Google, and even
that would mean to continuously bind our resources by chasing them
rather than doing something of our own design.
I know it sounds old-school, and not at all hip and trendy, but the
distinguishing factor between us and them is our free license and what
you can do with our data as a result. The quirky; the "unexpected uses";
the interesting things that people try out if they get their hands on
our data.
It's no use running after Google. We need to get the message across that
we're the free alternative, and people will have to accept that we're
not as polished as Google are. We are the project for those that
understand "free and open". Those for whom ease of use is more important
than the licensing of the result are not our clientele and we'll never
be able to win them over, except by making them understand the
importance of "free and open".
Bye
Frederik
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