[OSM-dev] Is there or should there be an OSM approved work exchange forum?

[Jo Walsh]

Do OSM freelance developers typically hang out in one place, or is there
a jobs list or similar? (I recall the London perl community getting
tired of recruiter posts and starting a reasonably successful jobs list;
OSGeo still has a directory of "community approved suppliers of
consultants" list on its web pages which has the arguable benefit of not
being publically editable. http://www.osgeo.org/search_profile )

I ask right now because someone has just popped up on irc with a
reasonably handsome sounding offer of freelance work on an OSM based
project. Other people seem to occasionally pop up to socialise their
work projects and requests on irc. It could be good to have somewhere
more public and constructive than irc to redirect such folks towards.
This list is clearly not it, but seemed the best place to catch the most
interested parties. 

I see from a forum post that there's a kind of company directory on the
wiki, but it looks a bit indiscriminate, doesn't differentiate between
OSM service providers and OSM consultants in a way that's helpful for
people offering short contracts with potentially FOSS outcomes:
https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/28660/looking-for-freelance-nominatim-expert
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Commercial_OSM_Software_and_Services

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:!i!/What_a_company_should_never_do
- this is very entertaining and funny, but it's worth having a more
serious view of the flipside, "How to engage your business with OSM in
constructive ways".

FWIW here is the spiel from the irc channel, "basically we need to zoom
into GPS location, allow a user to click on a data collection point
(water sediment for eg) and then overlay a simple animation using image
sequences over a specific area of the visible map... Im very pro OSS.
why hire a someone to build a new product when you can pay someone to do
what they love and improve an existing product..." I won't re-post their
contact email here, but would pass it along to others.

What's my personal interest here? Right now i'm just over-using OSM as a
displacement activity while on a short sabbatical from my civil service
day job, but eventually I may find the confidence to step off the 9-5
machine again, and I sympathise with the views of the hirer in the irc
discussion. I'd love to see the broad ecology developing in ways which i
could one day be a part of while retaining autonomy. Okay, enough
early-morning rambling on this topic... 


zx


-- 
  Jo Walsh
  metazool at fastmail.net