[Osmf-talk] Core OpenStreetMap software development and support

Darafei "Komяpa" Praliaskouski me at komzpa.net
Mon Dec 4 10:47:47 UTC 2017


Hi,

I'd like to flag an issue with our core software development process.

openstreetmap.org is a complex system of many different servers being
currently maintained by operations working group. Server hardware are being
regularly taken care of, even though OWG consists of volunteers.

If we look at https://github.com/openstreetmap we can see that project
consists of many parts from software point of view. Some of them are
maintained (notably JOSM, iD and openstreetmap-carto), but that's not the
case for the rest. Let's have a look at what happened since June:

openstreetmap-website, the rails application powering most of osm.org -
 81 commits by Tom Hughes, mostly being security and policy tweaks;
 19 commits by Bryan Housel, mostly being iD editor version bump;
 18 commits by Andy Allan, mostly being refactorings.
277 open issues, 34 non-merged pull requests.
https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/graphs/contributors?from=2017-06-01&to=2017-12-04&type=c


cgimap, c++ application powering /map call -
no commits.
https://github.com/openstreetmap/cgimap/graphs/contributors?from=2017-06-01&to=2017-12-04&type=c


Both projects have major performance issues known for a year, with a
prototype fix:
https://github.com/Komzpa/fastmap. There is also an issue with replication
diffs being implemented on top of unsuitable postgres mechanism that may
cause data loss in diffs and resurrection of old data:
https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/154

mod_tile/renderd, c toolchain powering our tile servers:
no commits. 77 issues raised. 19 pull requests waiting to be merged.
has an issue of under-utilizing rendering server capacity.
There is big comment on what needs to be improved by apmon:
https://github.com/openstreetmap/mod_tile/pull/152#issuecomment-348805403

osm2pgsql, c(++) application powering our tile servers:
10 commits. 84 issues. 8 pull requests open.
https://github.com/openstreetmap/osm2pgsql/graphs/contributors?from=2017-06-01&to=2017-12-04&type=c


Lack of resources to fix core issues is sometimes leading to workarounds
that prevent growth:

 - issues with scalability of rendering cluster led to bans and blocks of
different web sites using openstreetmap's tiles;

 - issue with API database scalability was worked around as "limit
changeset size to less objects" instead of fixing the underlying API
slowness and timing out issue. Discussions just blocked after merge:
https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/1259

OSMF was created as an organization to support the OpenStreetMap project
and not shape the community. I think that this is precisely where OSM needs
support and ask OSMF board to provide a way for us all to get out of the
situation.
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