[OSM-dev] Some advice for a new OSM client

[Abhi Beckert]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 7:33 PM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>wrote:

> Abhi Beckert wrote:
> > My biggest question is, what is the best place to get tiles from? My
> > users will typically want to download tiles from home, and have them
> > all loaded on the device like a traditional GPS. There seem to be lots
> > of tile servers out there, which is the best one?
>
> First of all, you absolutely absolutely absolutely must read
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_usage_policy
>
> OSM does not provide a free tile-serving service for all-comers. As you say
> that many of your users will be editing the map (yay), I'd guess that the
> sysadmins will look more leniently on your app than on the dozens of
> leeching apps that have shown up in the App Store and caused major
> heartache
> for OSM. Nonetheless if your usage is significant enough to be noticed, it
> is by definition causing a problem.
>

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for. I don't think my app will
have anywhere near enough users to have a significant impact (niche market +
it won't be a free app), but I absolutely want to do the right thing. This
project wouldn't be possible at all without OSM.

I guess my two options are to either run my own server, or use OSM's servers
and give regular donations to more than cover my bandwidth consumption. The
former would give me more flexibility, the latter is easier for me and
probably better for the community as a whole... Anyway, no need to decide
that until I actually have a working app.


> > Or even better, is there any open source code to render the raw vector
> map
> > data on an iPhone?
>
> I've just asked (on IRC) someone who's working on this and he says "not
> yet,
> but possibly in the near future". :)
>

I'll stick with tiles for now then. I don't really want to create my own
from scratch... at least not yet. More important features to focus my
attention on.
- Abhi
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