[Osmf-talk] [OSM-talk] "The Future of Free and Open-Source Maps" Slashdot.org , Saturday February 17, 2018

[Christoph Hormann]

On Tuesday 20 February 2018, Rob Nickerson wrote:
> I don't think we are talking about the OSMF instructing people how to
> *map* here.
>
> I do however feel that the OSMF is perfectly entitled to take the
> following approach: "we rely on having mappers - what can we do to
> support?"

There is a fine line between supporting mappers and steering mappers.  
Most projects in a position to support mappers in a significant way 
(think of editors, maps, QA tools) are under significant pressure to do 
steering rather than just supporting.  Such pressure might come from 
organizations with certain interests or might simply be based on the 
interests of a vocal group of mappers at the expense of less vocal 
parts of the mapper base.

And at the moment i don't see any reason to assume a centralized OSMF 
management or specific selective support of projects would be any less 
prone to such pressure than individual de-centralized management as it 
is common right now.  The latter has the advantage though that 
different interests represented in different projects often better 
compensate each other.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/