[Talk-us] FOR FUN: collapsing economy -> good for OSM?

Alan Brown adbrown1967 at yahoo.com
Thu Nov 20 23:32:04 GMT 2008


This is a bit tongue in cheek - but not completely.

Like the rest of the economy, I've seen some significant layoffs in the mapping business lately - DASH navigation let go 70% of their company, deCarta (formerly known as Telcontar) let go 10% ... some people let go had pretty good reputations.  I'm hopeful for myself, but regardless of what people do for a living, this is not a good time to be laid off.

I was thinking, if I got laid off, and had too much time on my hands, and no job leads, I'd probably spend more time dickering around the neighborhood, improving the map of my area.  Perhaps it's a bit presumptuous, but it seems to me that collapsing economy means people with skills with time on their hands, which means more opportunities for open source efforts.

Now I have no intention of having more time on my hands :) but I wonder - will my prediction about more volunteers be right?  Maybe OSM should avail itself to the newly unemployed - give them something to say they were busy with when they were out of work.  During the Great Depression, people built trails; maybe this time people would digitize trails?

-Alan
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