[Strategic] getting started

"Oliver Kühn" osm.oliver.kuehn at gmx.de
Wed Jun 2 09:58:03 BST 2010


Hi,

> Yup, if everything could be fixed with money, then OSM would be a commercial company, not a volunteer project.

> Partially, I don't think the Foundation has a good comprehensive picture of all needs, along with an evaluation of
> how much the community can provide, and what would need funding.


I think Frederick highlighted some good point in his recent mail where the community is good at and where not. However, I think you can put it even more generic: It is the fun stuff where the community is good and it is the less fun stuff where the community is not so good at. 

When I say fun stuff then I mean the points that are technical related and give an immediate feedback: mapping, writing software, creating, deriving and rendering all kind of maps, inventing and agreeing on map attributes or setting up servers. The less fun stuff seam to be the bureaucratic things, which relate legal aspects, communicating to the "outside world" (people, which are not insiders or are not yet at all familiar with OpenStreetMap), identifying and addressing the needs of different user groups (individual beginners versus experts, companies, application developers, legal authorities) as well as their different motivations to work with OpenStreetMap (the many different reasons to create or consume the maps). I believe that there currently is an unhealthy split between creators and consumers of the OpenStreetMap - in the sense that there are two few consumers. I consider it unhealthy as it inherits awareness of the OpenStreetMap project. Most people that purely want to consume a map go to GoogleMaps. It becomes a different story when considering the special interest derivates like OpenCycleMap, OpenMTBMap, OpenSeaMap and so on. Here OpenStreetMap can play out its unique features and advantages.

If one of the goals of OpenStreetMap is to achieve a broader acceptance then it needs to address the requirements of the different user groups. And if it wants to play a role in the corporate world then it needs to become more professional in the sense of improving at the bureaucratic stuff, meaning to take away insecurity in regards to the license (what does it mean for the companies' own data that used in conjunction with OSM) but also provide a good level of basics (the confidence test: everybody is trying to find its personal address first and failing most of the time when using OpenStreetMap due to the lack of a good address database).

Therefore I see one of the main tasks of this group and the OSMF to take away the burden of bureaucratic stuff from the active community by raising money to buy professional services to cover unsexy stuff in the sense of the active community - meaning the active community can decide how they want it but they do not need to make their hands dirty.

Regards,
Oliver




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