[OSM-dev] Release candidate for OSM binary format is in osmosis trunk.

[Frederik Ramm]

Kai,

Kai Krueger wrote:
> So I would just like to see a proper "deprecation process" with ample of
> time to adjust and the appropriate wide announcements be followed that were
> discussed in respect to the gazetteer retirement to not have the same nasty
> surprises.

I always viewed the Geofabrik extracts as a service to the community who 
build interesting things, or try out stuff - and who can also be counted 
on for a little bit of willingness to adapt to change, or add a little 
extra program to their toolchain if required.

You're making it sound as if the Geofabrik extracts are meanwhile a 
staple ingredient of consumer-facing services ("just download gpsmid 
here and get your data from Geofabrik and you're good to go") - 
consumers who need to have things served on a silver platter and who 
cannot be bothered to install software or convert files or something. 
I'm not entirely comfortable with that.

I think if you really are in a situation where you need a guaranteed 6 
month notice period before anything changes, you should calculate some 
buffer on *your* side - e.g. you should definitely not assume that 
certain files will be at a certain place on a certain server all the 
time, but instead have some sort of directory that is under your 
control. You cannot burden Geofabrik - or any OSMer running something in 
his spare time - with keeping your application happy. Especially not if 
you only tell them about your application depending on them when they 
want to make a change!

Having said that, I won't switch off the bz2 stuff tomorrow but I 
certainly think that I'd prefer to use Geofabrik resources to produce 
more extracts for more people than to keep things running smoothly for 
end users of an application somewhere. The Geofabrik download stuff is 
primarily intended to be low-level - a building block for members of our 
community, not a shrink-wrapped service for the world.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"