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<p>That does come across as a little arrogant, Jochen. The mappers and the data consumers need each other; neither can flourish without the other. A symbiotic model would be more accurate. As you say, we shouldn't change things willy-nilly, but to say bluntly "it's your problem" to all data consumers and to express such a dismissive attitude towards their feedback is misrepresenting the relationship somewhat.</p>
<p>Colin</p>
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<p>On 2013-11-09 18:25, Jochen Topf wrote:</p>
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<pre>On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 03:25:35PM +0000, Rob Nickerson wrote:</pre>
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px">A few days ago there was a thread about the pros/cons of moving admin boundaries to a new database. I'm not going to give my opinion on this as the thread has now fizzled out, but I will suggest that decisions like this should involve as many of our end data users as possible (we have moved beyond a small isolated project). One such user is mySoicety. Check out the video of their MapIt Global talk at <a href="http://lanyrd.com/2013/sotm/scpkhg/">http://lanyrd.com/2013/sotm/scpkhg/</a> to see how they use boundaries from OSM. Perhaps some way of tracking our data consumers would be useful. Or maybe we need a way for them to say which tags they are interested in so that they can receive mail just about these.</blockquote>
<pre>That's the wrong way around. If you are using OSM data it is your job to keep
abreast of developments in OSM. A volunteer project like OSM can't keep track
of all their "customers" the way a commercial company might. That's not to
say that we should change things willy-nilly, we should announce changes
beforehand etc. But we do that on our mailing lists etc. And yes, that puts
a lot of burden on the users of OSM data, but they get it for free, so there.
(Of course there are companies who will do this job for you, ie follow OSM
development while maintaining stable data formats etc. to their customers.)
Jochen</pre>
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