[OSM-dev] Thoughts on an enhanced GPX api

[Andy Allan]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 4:08 PM, Richard Fairhurst<richard at systemed.net> wrote:

> Personally I'd like to see _more_ emphasis on going out there with a GPS,
> and less on "oh, we'll find an import"

Hear hear.

> "oh, you can do it from satellite
> imagery".

I'm less bothered by that, to be honest.

>OSM as an agglomeration of imports is little more than one of
> those terrible "geodata catalogs" that seem to be discussed interminably on
> OSGeo mailing lists.

Yep. I'm especially concerned about imports into areas that don't have
many people in OSM - c.f. TIGER, GNIS etc in the US - when you take a
three-year time horizon on this and find that practically none of it
has been edited then IMHO there was too big an import for the size of
the community. But then again, where you have a thriving community,
you don't need the import in the first place.

I'd much rather work to put compatible datasets into the "other
sources", alongside GPX traces, aerial imagery, walking papers and all
the rest - handily available to use as a reference - rather than
stuffing them directly into OSM, warts and all.

Cheers,
Andy