[Osmf-talk] osmf-talk Digest, Vol 27, Issue 2

[fh.sainct]

Two quick remarks:
 
1) As a 'recent member' reaction to Nic Roets comment:

> Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:28:46 +0200
> From: Nic Roets
> To: Chris Fleming
> (...)
> > Finally is the fee putting people off joining, ?15 a year is a lot of money
> > to some people.
>
> I'm not 100% sure that it's the ?15. Whatever the reason, membership
> numbers are too small.

I for one did join quite recently, and I remember it is almost by chance I got to this point instead of just donating the same money to Openstreetmap.

I fear it is not very visible, to the average contributors, that instead of sending some bucks to maintain a server they can indeed participate, to some extent, to the actual strategy.

I would suggest to bring both ways closer, straight in the OSM front page, and maybe still together on the next 'donate' page...
 
 
 
2) On Henk Hoff question, 'Should there be reasons to deny membership?', and Frederik Ramm initial allusion to a Google guy being elected, I fear that like it or not, this boils down to defining what our competitors are.
Yes, *competitors*.
 
In the private industry where I belong (without any relation to mapping thankfully), strategies are very clear and well defined, and obviously part of them do concern competitors.
And the objectives about competitors are clear, explicit, and *not* nice.
 
There is absolutely no doubt, Google and the other private mappers are actively looking for ways to earn more market share, yes, than OSM. And this including by cloning OSM approaches when useful (see http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/04/11/1635 in case you didn't know Google is organizing nice mapping parties).
This is a normal behavior, some would even say healthy.
 
Part of this behavior involves 'restituting' competitors strategies.
 
To me it is obvious that, if given the possibility, Google et al will definitely step in, whatever the cost --just to know OSM strategy, and clearly with objectives that are not nice. To say the least.
 
Now I certainly have been too hot in my text above, but if I managed to have you all thinking about what OSM *competitors* are, I'll be happy already.
 

Hervé


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