[Strategic] 2012

[Dermot McNally]

Hi Frederik,

I'll try to address your questions:

On 30 January 2012 08:32, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

>   who was present in Friday's IRC meeting?
>
> (Not wanting to nag since I know minutes are a pain, but I would have
> checked myself on
> http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes#Strategic_Working_Group
> if there had been any more recent minutes/logs than 2nd December 2012.)

Firstly on the apparent minutes backlog - what that in fact represents
is a meeting backlog, as SWG hadn't got back into the habit of meeting
since the Christmas break. Not ideal, but it's worth being clear that
there has not been a batch of unminuted meetings.

As to the attendees, I have neither a firm list nor a complete IRC
transcript. Mikel chaired, but it took him 10 minutes after the usual
start time to get a reaction from other participants (that was when I
spotted that there was in fact activity), during which time he had
begun to compose his Friday email, which he intended to send in lieu
of the meeting, so that the next meeting could take place in the
framework of a planned list of topics, seeded by his email and
enriched by contributions from others.

It may be that Mikel has the IRC transcript and could post it as a
"best set" of minutes, but in effect, after our late start with a
small group, we resolved instead to discuss those items that we felt
should be on agenda for SWG in 2012. I agreed to send my followup mail
by way of communicating the matters discussed at the meeting.

Participants who were certainly present: Me, Mikel, apmon, TomH.
Others please shout if I have overlooked you. Mikel, do you have the
complete transcript? I have only the very tail end which RichardF
happened still to have in his buffer.

> On 01/30/12 00:55, Dermot McNally wrote:
>>
>> Arising once again because of the switch2osm campaign: Confront the
>> issue of where users wishing to use OSM instead of other providers
>> should get their services. Base assumption (also for discussion): That
>> there should be suitable map services for such users, that it should
>> be a strategic goal to ensure this become so. This is without
>> prejudice to the question of who should operate the services.
>
>
> I have difficulty in parsing the above.
>
> Is there already a definition of what is "suitable", or is defining the
> "suitability" something that is part of SWG's role? If the latter, is there
> already an idea of what is "suitable" or is this copletely open?

Completely open, including the definition of suitability. Both this
list item and switch2osm arise out of the (granted not universal in
the project) principle that we want end users to use our data instead
of other map data, among other reasons, because we see that as
demonstrating relevance in ways that will attract a bigger and more
useful community.

So in accepting this into the SWG plan for the year, we are resolving
to consider this issue, with all possible outcomes open, including the
possibility that we will decide that nothing new needs to be done.

> (Is SWG looking for an one-fits-all definition of "suitable" or is it
> possible that different tile services are "suitable" for different users?)

Granted it hasn't been discussed yet, just accepted as a topic, but
I'll peep into my own crystal ball and suggest that not only different
tile servers will prove important, but also different data extraction
services, search engines, geocoders, routing engines, JavaScript
slippy map embedders, whatever. If other map services are providing
them and end users rely on them, we should be considering whether the
OSM world does, should or could offer them too.

> Would that then mean that SWG would evaulate whether the services already
> listed on http://switch2osm.org/providers/ are "suitable", and if it is
> found they are not, endeavour to create "suitable" services?

I'd be more cautious and go with "cause/encourage to be created". But
certainly, if a service doesn't exist and we come to the conclusion
that it ought to, that does identify a vacuum that it becomes our task
to see filled.

> Does "it should be a strategic goal to ensure this *become* so" mean that an
> evaluation has already been made and the existing services have been found
> to be not "suitable"?

No, no evaluation has been made, and this would need to feature in how
we address the issue. Informally, it does seem like an awful lot of
users are not finding an OSM solution to their problem in spaces where
it seems like they could be helped, though.

> Is "the existing services are good enough and the market is going to do the
> rest" still a possible outcome of the analysis, or have SWG already decided
> that OSMF needs to either operate their own commercial tileserver or
> contract someone to do so?

The former is still a possible outcome - albeit, probably with a lot
more provision of information to end-users, in the spirit of
switch2osm.


Dermot

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