[OHM] A project for storing, editing, visualizing historic maps

[Tim Waters]

Hi Max,

really cool project - I think you are not alone in thinking that mapping
history is inevitable. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts as to the
most difficult sides of the project and if there's anything that OHM would
fix, or if any lessons learnt could also be relevant to this project. Kudos
for sharing!

It's interesting to note that this was a closed / startup project (If I
read your email correctly) that became open source, for two reasons. The
first is that I would imagine that there may be other startups working
alone in the historical mapping space but we wouldn't know. And secondly it
may mean that there would be an unproven business model in this space.

With OSM there is a very healthy ecosystem of tools, developers,
applications, services around the core project which sustains both
themselves financially and also benefits the wider project. I'm wondering:
did you make any forays into a business model for AtlasStory? Could you see
an OHM ecosystem around OHM with private or VC funded companies doing
historical mapping?

One of my jokey slides I usually put in when talking about about OHM is
that no one wants to make money with it, which makes it more of a hobby,
research, academic pursuit (and thus more "pure") so it could be good to
get some insight into the business model side of things!

Cheers,

Tim

On 15 December 2015 at 07:07, Max Olson <maxprogram at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> I've been a subscriber to the OHM mailing list for quite a while now,
> though I've never been a contributor.
>
> I wanted to post here an idea I've worked on for a few years now: a
> platform for storing, editing, and visualizing historic maps:
>
>
> http://futureblind.com/2015/11/13/atlastory-mapping-the-history-of-the-world/
>
> It started as a passion project and once it got to the point I couldn't
> devote enough time to it, everything was open sourced.
>
> I thought some of the concepts, code, or maps could be of help to the OHM
> community. Some of the general concepts differ from what the OHM community
> is working on, such as adding data bottom-up vs. top-down, or not using OSM
> infrastructure exclusively. But I think sharing everything and discussing
> openly the best ways to proceed speeds up the process of reaching the same
> goal.
>
> I don't have much time to work on the idea anymore but I'd still love to
> discuss. This is something I've given a lot of thought to so I'll always
> want to contribute in some way.
>
> Best,
> Max Olson
>
> _______________________________________________
> Historic mailing list
> Historic at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/historic
>
>
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