[OSM-talk-be] On Wheels

[Glenn Plas]

Ben,

The person behind the engine is Rob Geertsen, robgeertsen at gmail.com

I tweeted about collaborating with them and they marked that tweet as
favorite, but didn't really respond.  It sure looks like they are
unaware of OSM since they use google maps which I find a very odd choice
given the level of detail at deeper zoom levels vs OSM is huge,
especially in the cities.

It's a VZW so perhaps the business plan isn't that important to them,
the owners just seem to be physically bound to a wheelchair, so they
have personal interest in this matter.

They do have an impressive partner list, I wonder how they got that
sorted out.

The website however is suffering from resource issues at this moment.

Glenn


On 17-03-15 12:35, Pieter-Jan Pauwels wrote:
> Hi Ben,
> 
> Excellent :) That’s the nuance I wanted to hear. 
> Then we’re on the same page here. 
> 
> Good luck in contacting them. 
> 
> Kind regards,
> Pieter-Jan
> photo	
> *Pieter-Jan Pauwels*
> Community Coordinator, Open Knowledge Belgium
> m: +32 476 66 27 77 <tel:+32 476 66 27
> 77> | e: pieter-jan.pauwels at okfn.org
> <mailto:pieter-jan.pauwels at okfn.org> | w: okfn.be <http://okfn.be> 
> 
> 
>> On 17 Mar 2015, at 12:27, Ben Abelshausen <ben.abelshausen at gmail.com
>> <mailto:ben.abelshausen at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Pieter-Jan,
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 10:15 AM, Pieter-Jan Pauwels
>> <pieter-jan.pauwels at okfn.org <mailto:pieter-jan.pauwels at okfn.org>> wrote:
>>
>>     So before we start taking out the pitchforks and scream 'stop
>>     monetising crowdsourcing', let’s us approach them in an inviting
>>     way. See if we can help them in any way and see what their endgame
>>     is. Maybe we’ll not be able to help them in short term, but we’ll
>>     have a friend organisation and new ambassadors in the long run. 
>>
>>
>> No pitchforks here, my opinion is my personal one about a hypothetical
>> situation that has not happened yet and will most likely not happen.
>>
>> I do think that ethics should be independent of ones dependency on
>> funds or business models. If planning out a business model would
>> exempt me of all ethics-related conderations then I think there is a
>> bit of a problem. 
>>
>> That being said, it is possible that the collection of this kind of
>> data needs to facilitated better than we have done as an
>> OSM-community, and if the needed funding can only come from a business
>> model that keeps the data closed then so be it. But I don't believe
>> that to be the case either.
>>
>> I also think it's a bad option to keep my opinion to myself because it
>> may offend future partners. I hope we can cooperate with them even
>> when they know of my personal opinion about the matter. Mine may even
>> be different from our community-viewpoint.
>>
>> I'm also not claiming that any of the above remarks apply to their
>> (future) way of doing things because I have never spoken to any of the
>> people involved. I'm just voicing my fear about the matter because we
>> have never been contacted and part of our community is try to collect
>> exactly the same data.
>>
>> The obvious next step is to contact them and ask them how we can help
>> them improve open accesibility data. I think we can all agree on that! :-)
>>
>> Met vriendelijke groeten,
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Ben Abelshausen
>> _______________________________________________
>> Talk-be mailing list
>> Talk-be at openstreetmap.org <mailto:Talk-be at openstreetmap.org>
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-be
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-be mailing list
> Talk-be at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-be
> 


-- 
"Everything is going to be 200 OK."