[Osmf-talk] seeking feedback on needs summary

[Richard Fairhurst]

Milo van der Linden wrote:
> Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> I doubt that OSM needs active "market development".
>
> I strongly disagree. I am absolutely certain openstreetmap needs
> market development. More people should be able to join in map editing
> feeling at ease so we will see more and more evenly distributed
> edits.

I think you're kind of answering the wrong question there.

Most people I know believe that OSM needs to develop to become more 
user-friendly, more capable, harder, better, faster, stronger. We're 
agreed on that.

But there are two viewpoints on how we get there.

One viewpoint is that you need usability reviews, consultants, funding 
plans and Needs Summaries to work out what to do.

The other viewpoint is that OSM is full of talented people who already 
want to build cool user-friendly stuff, and the priority should be to 
encourage a welcoming, friendly community where these talented people 
can thrive.

I'm strongly of the latter view and I think that's what Frederik is 
saying too. OSM has already developed from a fascinating, but unusable, 
unholy mess used by 20 geeks in 2005, into a massive, fast-moving 
worldwide project with 200,000+ registered users. That's entirely our 
doing. Are we capable, on our own, of taking that to 1m users? Evidence 
to date suggests: hell yes.

cheers
Richard