[Openstreetmap] The bigger picture

[Oliver White]

Perhaps if somebody were to sell the OSM data on ebay as a CD, it would help 
in the case of other websites who need large amounts of data.

OSM would benefit by reduced load on its servers (no need for bulk consumers 
of map data to use the web interface) and potentially with some money for 
selling the CD.

The consumers (websites etc.) would save on their own bandwidth, and get a 
complete set of data without having to query openstreetmap.org for it.

That would leave openstreetmap.org needing only to support active users (i.e. 
people contributing data to it), people viewing data for personal use, and 
people getting small enough sections of data that it's not worth buying the 
CD for.

The benefit of CC-BY-SA in all this of course, is that anyone who buys the 
data can redistribute it (on their websites, on ebay, on bittorrent, etc.) 
further reducing the bandwidth (and support) burden on everyone.  

OJW