On Fri, Dec 06, 2013 at 12:58:30PM +0000, Nick Whitelegg wrote: > 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?
The German community has been running such as server (in fact several of them) for years now and the experiences have not been great. First, there is no such thing as "the OSM PostGIS database". Everybody has a different idea what they need for their specific project. Using the hstore Postgres extension some of the needs can be filled, but not all. Second, it takes an enormous effort to keep those servers running. The people using the servers often have no idea how to develop and run services efficiently and without stepping on each others toes. So the admin constantly has to make sure everything runs smoothly without actually knowing what the "hobbyists" are doing. And the admin is, of course, a volunteer, too. So from our experience the problem is not so much the server itself but the administration that must be organized. And while our sponsored servers still exist, most people who at one time have used them have moved on and got their own servers where they can set up everything exactly as they want to and they are not impacted by other projects running their batch jobs at the same time. Jochen -- Jochen Topf joc...@remote.org http://www.jochentopf.com/ +49-721-388298 _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
