[Osmf-talk] ArcGIS Online & OSM

[James A. T. Rice]

On Wed, 5 May 2010, Kate Chapman wrote:

> Unfortunately here is an example from Todd Huffman who does work in
> the field in Afghanistan, I suspect related to that one application:

>>>> "Access blocked We suspect this client downloading maps in 
>>>> unauthorised manner. Please ask at irc.openstreetmaps.org"  And then 
>>>> redirected to http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_Abuse

Can I suggest a replacement of "unauthorised" with "abusive", otherwise it 
sounds like OSM being haughty, rather than actually there being a problem 
with overloading the servers.

IRC isn't really the most useful resource to send people to, and redirects 
probably won't work in most clients - perhaps setting up a 
policy.openstreetmap.org website and giving that in the tile message 
instead would be better?


As a way of not cutting clients off completely, yet not adversely 
affecting service for other users, perhaps a technical solution of only 
serving tiles available in cache immediately to particular user-agents, 
and then having a set of per user-agent queues for things not in cache 
would be appropriate?


You could always do a hybrid solution of the above two in order to get the 
message out but not potentially cut users off - serve the tile in a slow 
queue, and watermark it too with a message about abuse...


Cheers
James