On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Johan C <osm...@gmail.com> wrote: > OSM has two choices: make a strategic plan, or maintaining an organic grow > path. I love the way OSM developed so far, delivering great products such > as Mapnik, JOSM and mkgmap, having sysadmins doing a great job in keeping > the database available etcetera. It's also great to see that OSM now has > more than 1 million registered users. However, the number of users editing > ( http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries ) is not > increasing in the same manner. Being involved for over three years now in > the project, I have the assumption that the actual use of OSM in apps or > PND's is not rising very quickly, probably also caused by competition by > better products such as Google maps (yes, I know that OSM is a database and > not an app). And I noticed that trying to get advanced features in OSM, > like lane assist, is really troublesome, So, my question is: how do we want > Openstreetmap to evolve in the next years. The Wikimedia Foundation > launched a strategic planning process in 2009: > http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page which, in 2010, resulted in > a collaborative vision for the movement till 2015. > > We have various consumers of our maps. The 1 million registered OSM users, commercial users like Foursquare, government agencies like TriMet in Portland and the people that use our maps for everyday use. Our measures of success shouldn't just include how many registered users, but also the consumers of our data. How many non registered users use our web site, how many return? These are important metrics. I'm not even sure if we have them. Hopefully someone with more knowledge than me can make sure we publish the metrics.
I'm glad you brought up Wikimedia. According to their annual report, they sent over $11 Million (US) dollars on salaries. We are probably more like Wikimedia when you consider the importance of user contributions. The Redhat model I originally referenced is more Community Support model for a Open Source company. > In analogy, I would like to see the OSM Foundation to start such a process > with the OSM community and others outside the community. And once there's a > vision and a strategy for 2020, money might/will be needed to carry out the > strategy. > I fully concur that OSM Foundation needs to start a vision and strategy for the future. How do we get their attention? In this instance I don't believe we should lead from the rear. We need the leadership that the Foundation can provide. -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
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