[OSM-dev] Tile usage without proper identification

[Christoph Hormann]

On Friday 12 August 2016, Andy Allan wrote:
>
> We've always allowed other people to use our spare capacity on the
> tileservers, but recently it's got completely out of hand. Most of
> the use of our tileservers has become developers looking for free
> maps, nothing to do with the rest of the project. Often these are
> commercial companies who are using our tileservers and selling their
> apps. Subsidising commercial companies isn't the best use of
> community donations and volunteer sysadmin time, when there are many
> alternative services (such as those run by CartoDB, Stamen, etc) that
> provide zero-cost map layers based on OSM data anyway.

It would of course also be possible to be more strict in the limits of 
using the tiles in general on websites etc. but care would need to be 
taken to not scare users away from OSM into the arms of Google etc.

By the way currently

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_usage_policy

does not list any companies that provide drop in replacement services 
for the standard style.  Using the services listed there websites would 
be forced to switch to a different style.  

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/