[OSM-dev] Garmin GPX madness

[David Earl]

On 22/09/2008 11:51, Stefan de Konink wrote:
>> Stefan and Oliver - if you really believe that the community have been
>> brainwashed by Garmin, what's your plan of action to reverse the
>> brainwashing and liberate our minds?
> 
> I see many mappers in NL being 'so happy' with Garmin because OSM maps run
> on it. Happy-happy-joy-joy! As long Garmin is not actively committed to
> help OSM in the compiling of maps or publishing open specifications, or
> even open up the firmware, why do you even care for these devices because
> they have a screen? Wake up! If someone would buy a device for tracking
> take some el-cheapo NMEA receiver that does export the error-margin, and
> hook up your phone or GPS, the user will get the same fancy screen...
> with more possibilities of navigation and mapping.

You're being really unfair attacking us as you have been. We're not 
trying to promote Garmin, but lots of people do have them.

This is the first discussion I can remember on these lists about this 
issue. There's no flashing lights on the website that says the info from 
Garmin receivers is lacking. You've only mentioned vaguely "algorithms 
exist" to make use of accuracy info, but that's a fat lot of good if 
they aren't built in to our editors. Database objects don't have 
references back to the tracks (or other sources) from which they were 
derived, so you can't tell whether one's additional trace is better than 
the one from which what's already there is derived.

So at the moment, the additional info is irrelevant to ordinary mortals 
and info that some devices (and not just Garmin I imagine) may have 
problems in the future is not advertised.

I think this is a complete smokescreen at present.

David