[Talk-GB] OS and OSM

[Andy Allan]

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 10:19 AM, Steve Chilton <S.L.Chilton at mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
> I have been asked by editor of the Cartographic Journal to write a short piece on the effect of the release of OS OpenData on the OpenStreetMap project, and I am just trying to gather my thoughts, and make sure I cover all bases.

This isn't quite what you are looking for perhaps, but my main
overriding thought on OS OpenData is that it would be almost
impossible for the OS to give OSM so many benefits without helping
anyone else.

For all the kinds of data that OSM excels at - road centrelines,
parks, footpaths, names etc, the OpenData can be a great assistance as
part of our toolchains - helping us spot mistakes and omissions and so
on. But all the products that cover these areas are pretty much
useless in of themselves - the StreetView map is pretty dreadful to
use, the vector products are all chopped-up features only suitable for
rendering with the same scales and feature widths as the raster maps
they have been intended for. So there's almost no chance that someone
can build interesting and exciting things on top of these products
without replicating all the work we're doing in OSM.

As for the things we can't collect easily - boundaries, post codes and
so on, these datasets are functionally complete, but were never going
to compete with OSM.

I think if I'd been asked to decide what to release with the aim of
improving OSM while making sure its not undermined, I doubt I could
have done a better job.

Cheers,
Andy