[Strategic] Server hardware donation offer

[Richard Fairhurst]

Eugene Usvitsky wrote:
> For second Mapnik (with the same style and stuff, just as a mirror for
> the main)?

With the gradual winding-down of tiles at home (see  
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tilesathome/2011-February/006592.html), there is a potential need for a new "community style"  
tileset.

Though we know here that the real value of OSM is in the reuse of our  
rich dataset, a large part of the OSM community simply wants to see  
its work on the map. This often includes features not rendered by the  
core Mapnik style (i.e. that curated by Steve Chilton, Jon Burgess and  
Lennard).

t at h has fulfilled this need for several years, but its limitations  
have become increasingly apparent, while its advantages have been  
eroded by Mapnik improvements. The possible demise of t at h will place  
an intolerable burden on the 'core Mapnik style' maintainers. Dealing  
with insistent (and, let's be frank, sometimes abusive) requests for  
new features is energy-sapping, and accommodating them all on the map  
would ruin the cartography.

A minutely-updated osm2pgsql/Mapnik instance with a new "community  
style" would be a helpful use of this new hardware. It might also act  
as a testbed for features that might later make it into the core style  
(for example, localised shield renderings).

A new team would need to be assembled to admin both the tileserver and  
the style. Our existing team are overworked as it is. That said,  
Mapnik rendering with minutely updates is a fairly common, and  
well-documented, skill these days.

cheers
Richard