[OSM-dev] Skobbler’s MapDust in MapQuest

[Andy Allan]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Chris Browet <cbro at semperpax.com> wrote:

> However, I remember reading somewhere that the MapDust License is not very
> open.

It certainly had some undesirable sections in the Ts&Cs when it first
launched, but I think that was an oversight. I can see the section
numbers are discontinuous - e.g. 3.2 is missing - so I think it's been
updated to remove the worst. So the license covering the bug data
seems OK[1], but I'm presuming that the server-side stuff is mainly
closed-source.

> What's the opinion of the knowledgeable people, here? Should MapDust be
> supported by the editors the way OSB is?

Well, I wrote the MapDust support for Potlatch2, so take my words with
a pinch of salt. Yes, I think editors should be supporting MapDust,
along with every other bug system (e.g. OSB). If we can encourage /
cajole people to have similar interfaces (or even stop reinventing the
wheel) then so much the better, but it wouldn't be an open-source
community without a few overlaps and inefficiencies along the way.

The bigger question is how to change these systems to increase the
signal-to-noise ratio. I've been monitoring the bugs in MapDust for
the last few weeks around London - almost all of which are reported by
the skobbler navigation app (unsurprisingly) but unfortunately these
are absolutely useless 98% of the time. The good reports are quickly
buried under an increasing mound of "Enter note..." reports. In
contrast, in my experience the majority of OSB-reported bugs are
actually useful. I'm not sure what we can do about the skobbler-app
issue.

Cheers,
Andy

[1] Cue opening of licensing-based floodgates.