[Osmf-talk] seeking feedback on needs summary

[Milo van der Linden]

Mikel,

Excelent piece of product promotion in my opinion! I hope it will help 
you to draw interest to openstreetmap and eventually leads to lowering 
the boundaries of openstreetmap so indeed volunteers all over the world 
will sky-rocket the map making geobusiness profit all over the globe.


Best of luck,

Milo

Mikel Maron wrote:
> To avoid having to mess around with Google Docs permissions, I'm 
> pasting in the text below.
>
>
>       1.    Organization purpose
>
>
> *OpenStreetMap* is a 5 year old open initiative to create and provide 
> free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them.
>
> The *OpenStreetMap Foundation* is an international non-profit 
> organisation supporting but not controlling the project. It is 
> dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of 
> free geospatial data and to providing geospatial data for anybody to 
> use and share.
>
>
>       2.    Anticipated social impact
>
>
> Geographic data underlies almost every activity on Earth. 
> OpenStreetMap is aimed to be as big or bigger than Wikipedia in this 
> regard. An open, up-to-date map available to all for zero cost. This 
> will both revolutionalise access to such information and the mapping 
> industry itself.
>
> Specific instances include the response to Haiti earthquake, in which 
> OSM's voluntarily collected data became the base map for the relief 
> effort by all actors, from UN to NGOs to civil society. OSM has 
> impacted government policy towards data, such as data.gov.uk, and wide 
> interest in OSM in US federal government (to name just two). In the 
> technology world, OSM underlies hundreds of iPhone Apps, and is in and 
> supported by startups and established organizations. Some of the most 
> celebrated and boundary pushing web applications are based on OSM, 
> such as http://oakland.crimespotting.org/ and 
> http://opencyclemap.org/. People who have never before been involved 
> in map data collection now have accessible means to represent 
> themselves on the map, such as http://mapkibera.org.
>
>
>       3.    Brief overview of the following:
>
> •    Problem organization is trying to solve
>
> Map data is globally out of date, expensive and proprietary. 
> OpenStreetMap is designed to create Free geographic data, support 
> communities and individuals interested in it's creation and to scale 
> up it's use to new communities.
>
> •    Solution (describe value proposition)
>
> OpenStreetMap is as its name implies open. The unique solution it 
> embodies mirrors wikis in that any individual or organisation from 
> it's 230,000 member (and growing exponentially) userbase anywhere can 
> contribute, edit and fix map data anywhere on Earth using the simplest 
> open source tools possible.
>
> •    Why now (e.g. what trends make this the right time for this 
> solution)?
>
> With the advent of cheap off-the-shelf GPS units and loosely licensed 
> aerial imagery, the creation of open maps becomes possible by citizen 
> cartographers from Kansas to Kenya. With GPS accuracy restricted in 
> the past and lack of open source tools and a strong internet ecosystem 
> OpenStreetMap would not have been possible. Today, with over 200,000 
> users around the world, OSM is on the verge of critical mass in it's 
> mission to map the world for Free.
>
> •    Market Opportunity
>
> Today, maps are made in a traditional manner by employing many people 
> to drive around in cars loaded with computers and GPS equipment. This 
> is slow, expensive and a logistical problem. The high costs created a 
> barrier to entry and a duopoly in the form of NavTeq and TeleAtlas 
> based on top-down ideas and expensive hard-to-obtain licensing models, 
> much like the encyclopedias of yesteryear. OpenStreetMap similarly to 
> Wikipedia is the wind of change in this industry, threatening to turn 
> the very data collection mechanisms and licensing models on their 
> head, removing the value from the maps themselves and up the value 
> chain to services and more based on those maps.
>
> Outside of the western world where maps are hard to find and out of 
> date when found, OpenStreetMap is becoming the base map of choice 
> simply because it's faster, better and cheaper to create than a 
> traditional map. This is happening everywhere from Haiti to Georgia to 
> the Philippines.
>
> •    Competition, competitive advantage
>
> OpenStreetMap is unrestricted by old business models, proprietary 
> software, proprietary data and only allowing 'professionals' to create 
> maps. By removing these barriers OpenStreetMap is able to create a 
> more up to date map that is deeper and broader than current non-profit 
> or commercial offerings. By being open and 'getting out of the way of 
> the people', OpenStreetMap does not need expensive infrastructure 
> (hundreds of trucks, thousands of employees) and thus backward 
> licensing of the data to support that infrastructure. Thus the maps 
> are low-cost (Free) and by relying on crowd-sourcing are generally 
> more up to date and higher in quality that commercial maps.
>
> •    Product/service description
>
> OpenStreetMap at its core is an open, full history database of 
> geographic information that anyone can contribute to, and use. A 
> simple Application Programming Interface, simple tagging scheme, and 
> frequent full database dumps, have contributed to a very large 
> ecosystem of open source, and proprietary, data editors, visualization 
> tools, routing engines, and mobile applications. These new tool sets 
> have pioneered new techniques in map data collection 
> (http://walking-papers.org/), and made map making much more accessible 
> to non-experts.
>
> Around this technical infrastructure, OSM employs communication tools 
> like wikis, mailing lists, and IRC to support the community. Unlike 
> many online communities, OSM contributors often meet in person, at 
> mapping parties, conferences, and other events, building a very strong 
> social network. It could be said that the success of OSM is entirely 
> due to the passion of thousands of people who dedicate their spare 
> time and sometimes entire careers, to the pursuit of creating free 
> geographic data.
>
> •    Business model
>
> OpenStreetMap is a not-for-profit focused on the core mission of 
> creating and maintaining open map data. That said, much like the 
> availability of Linux and the software stacks around it this leads to 
> many opportunities for companies to monetise the data. Many companies 
> have been set up to do this such as CloudMade, Geofabrik and ITO 
> World. Loosely, these companies are analogous to RedHat which packaged 
> and maintained Linux distributions. In the same way, OpenStreetMap 
> data while Free itself gains value when hosted on the internet in 
> specific colors, projections and formats in a reliable QC/QA'd way. 
> These companies and many more to follow them provide those services.
>
> Beyond the immediate services they provide, many hundreds of their 
> customers and others who use OpenStreetMap data directly benefit from 
> the map. Many iPhone applications which use maps base their service on 
> OpenStreetMap. This is because the map is more up to date, zero in 
> price and on far better licensing terms than traditional maps allow.
>
> •    Team
>
> The OpenStreetMap Foundation consists of a UK-based non-profit with a 
> volunteer, elected, 7-person Board. The OSMF maintains ownership of 
> the infrastructure such as servers, trademarks and domain names. Its 
> vibrant community of circa 300 members comprise interested individuals 
> from all over the world who represent the very core of OpenStreetMap. 
> The membership vote on all activities from electing board members, 
> helping with licensing issues to choosing the logo for the Foundation.
>
> Beyond this core there are the tens of thousands of contributors 
> around the world. These are divided in to a typical long-tail 
> distribution of many thousands editing on an active basis and many 
> more who are less active, as seen in most large web communities. These 
> individuals most obviously help complete and maintain the map data, 
> however a core of perhaps 20 individuals help build, fix and maintain 
> the software and hardware stacks which OpenStreetMap relies on to 
> function.
>
>
>       4.    Use of proceeds
>
> OpenStreetMap is on the threshold of extremely rapid growth. We are 
> nearing 235,000 registered users, and 12,500 users contributing every 
> month, and if the past few years exponential increase continues, we 
> could see over 1 million registered users by the end of 2010. The 
> project is gaining wide attention in the media, and in governmental 
> circles, attracting the interest of new kinds of communities in new 
> places. We must prepare to scale up to meet this increase.
>
> OpenStreetMap is a volunteer community. We have no forgone conclusions 
> on what funding might cover, or if it's absolutely necessary, so the 
> details here are only a rough sketch of things. These are things we'd 
> like to do, may or may not require additional resources, but certainly 
> do require coordination and time. The process of thinking about OSM 
> growth and the potential resources and advice available to us, this 
> process is essential as we bootstrap into a more responsive organization.
>
> Our technical infrastructure is solid, but will need to grow ... more 
> servers, larger hosting capacity. The core software platform is 
> maintained by volunteers, but may need support. And our heroic 
> sysadmin crew will certainly need to grow.
>
> Much of OSM's community comes from the open source and other technical 
> communities. Non-techies often do climb the learning curve, but 
> contribution to OSM certainly does remain beyond the reach of many. We 
> have great need to invest in the user experience of OSM. Our 
> documentation and training materials need work to be accessible in new 
> communities. Efforts to introduce the OpenStreetMap approach into 
> government may need considerable investment. Curriculum development 
> could rapidly increase uptake in academia. Many parts of the world 
> face considerable social and economic challenges which may require 
> focused efforts. Local chapters may need assistance in their own OSM 
> advocacy strategy and projects. Communication between dispersed parts 
> of this global project can benefit from more facilitation and outreach.
>
> The OSM Foundation itself has grappled with many organizational 
> questions, and the Board and Foundation membership overloaded with 
> duties. Much of the constitution of the Foundation needs examination. 
> Legal questions arise often. Financial questions arise often. OSMF can 
> well benefit from advice and support to build an organization capable 
> of handling the coming growth, and effectively disperse responsibility.
>
>
>       5.    Major risks
>
> There are no signs today, however, the large community of volunteers 
> may one day show signs of fatigue and stop mapping. So far as a place 
> gets mapped (say roads and buildings) our volunteers only map more, in 
> greater depth (for example points of interest, address data) rather 
> than moving on to other projects. There is of course churn in the 
> userbase, however we believe OSM will continue to grow successfully.
>
> Based on OpenStreetMap's success some commercial entities have built 
> similar but flawed competitors. Google have built MapMaker - a way for 
> volunteers to help build and update Google Maps. This is a controlled 
> community, restricted in what and how it can edit and with data 
> released back only under a very draconian non-profit license. 
> Similarly the startup waze is doing essentially the same thing, 
> releasing a free GPS navigation app for phones which allows users to 
> edit the map. However, the data here too is closed and the methods of 
> editing and community interaction are severely limited. These may 
> provide competition for the attention of mappers, and thus draw them 
> away from OSM however the core motivation of many OSMers is not met by 
> creating another proprietary map database.
>
> OpenStreetMap is hosted for free by a London university. This 
> infrastructure consists of tens of computers which draw space, power 
> and bandwidth. There is no known reason why this hosting would stop, 
> however at some point in the future we may be asked to move on.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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