[OSM-dev] GSoC: formalising knowledge in OSM

["Marc Schütz"]

> 2009/3/25 Radomír Černoch <radomir.cernoch at gmail.com>:
> > Firstly create the initial ontology to support at
> > least all official map elements.
> 
> Hi Radomír,
> 
> There's no such thing. In fact, the lack of a fixed/official ontology
> is held as one of the key defining attributes of the success,
> flexibility and scalability of OSM, so I'm not sure how well your
> project will work in the long run. I could see you getting to the end
> of your project and having a working system that is used here and
> there, but isn't accepted by significant parts of the OSM community.
> 
> Some other project where a successful outcome to your summer leads to
> wider acceptance of your code is probably a better idea.

I wouldn't say so. He is not suggesting to restrict people from putting things into the database, but to build a machine-readable description of what is actually in there.

Simply replace "official" by "commonly used", and his ideas make a lot of sense.

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