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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2023-06-01 1:31 p.m., Steve Coast
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CH2PR18MB32851B4B553BBB859E5336E4DF49A@CH2PR18MB3285.namprd18.prod.outlook.com">
<div style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="elementToProof">
The OSMF is seeking massive new funding while at the same time
operating a global minutely updated tileserver for the entire
world to use for free. It's important to note that keeping this
updated (for the entire world, for free) is itself painful and
expensive compared to caching the tiles.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Several years ago, maintaining the tile service was painful due
to trying to manage our own CDN over a large number of donated
hosts. Since early 2021, this has not been the case and it is no
longer a headache.<br>
</p>
<p>About 10% of the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://operations.osmfoundation.org/2022/12/31/plan.html">OWG's
hosting and hardware budget</a> goes towards tiles. This is a
mix of capital expense for servers; ongoing power, space, and
network costs; and logging/monitoring costs. Each of those
categories is very roughly a third. The actual spend is likely to
be closer to 5% - tile-related costs are likely to come in under
budget, but other savings might push the percentage back up.<br>
</p>
<p>All of the CDN costs and about half the render server costs are
sponsored, thanks to Fastly, AWS, AARNet, University College
London, OSUOSL, and Umeå University. If we were paying commercial
prices, the CDN costs would be a significant portion of our
budget, but we're getting the service for free.<br>
</p>
<p>Time costs are more difficult to tabulate, but because everything
is well-scripted the tile service doesn't require much sysadmin
time.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CH2PR18MB32851B4B553BBB859E5336E4DF49A@CH2PR18MB3285.namprd18.prod.outlook.com">
<div style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="elementToProof">
Today, bidenlaptopmedia.com, perhaps the United States most
visited website in the last 6 hours, is now using OSMF managed
tiles for free.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>We publish top users of tiles at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://planet.openstreetmap.org/tile_logs/">https://planet.openstreetmap.org/tile_logs/</a>, but because the day
hasn't ended yet, today's numbers aren't out yet. I had a look
anyways.<br>
</p>
<p>Although their traffic is significant, the load from them is not.
They are 54th in the US for the last 6 hours, based on backend
tiles served, our standard measure of load. Odds are that users
are viewing a small number of areas, so most traffic is being
served by the CDN, which costs us no resources or sysadmin time. <br>
</p>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CH2PR18MB32851B4B553BBB859E5336E4DF49A@CH2PR18MB3285.namprd18.prod.outlook.com">
<div style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="elementToProof">
Could we rethink this and instead limit tiles to editors,
instead of seeking to expand an already free service which has
plenty of commercial competition? That way, resources could be
used on things that benefit OSM.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>The vast majority of use from non-OSM sources is very small
websites. To restrict access from these sites while allowing JOSM
and editing-related sites like MapRoulette would require
investments in access restricting technology which we <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/342#issuecomment-1138148939">investigated
developing, but decided against because it wasn't worth it</a>.
Developing this, administering it, and deciding what sites to
allow would significantly boost the sysadmin time needed. It might
also impact the willingness of sponsors to donate services, which
could boost costs significantly and overwhelm any potential
savings.<br>
</p>
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