[Osmf-talk] seeking feedback on needs summary
Richard Fairhurst
richard at systemeD.net
Sun Mar 21 22:32:31 UTC 2010
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
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