[OSM-talk] About my stubbornness

[Nigel Magnay]

> > It should be possible to fork a project on the base of OSM, which it
> > is, IMHO.
>
> Do you really think this would be possible without a database
> representation?
> Maybe it would be, but with a much more trouble.
>

It would be perfectly easy to create an GPX database outside of OSM,
and point editors directly to that. You could take planet.osm files to
populate most of the database and fork relatively easily.

> > Essential decisions (Licensing etc.) have to be made by the community.
> >
> > > - anonymity is good
> >
> > Correct. I dont' see why you need an anonymous account for that. People
> > wishing to stay anonymous will not use their real email address for
> > signing up, nor any relevant password.
>
> Much people do not wish to stay anonymous, they just want not to
> register! This is not a discussion for people who surf through
> anon-proxy or onion-routing and delete their cookies and browser cache
> every 2 Mitutes. It is a thing of simplicity. We loose much manpower if
> we forbid anonymity and gain nothing.
> The seemingly advantage of separating "good" people which do not upload
> copyrighted data from "bad" ones can achieved in a similar way by
> logging ip addresses.
>

Really? I'm not convinced by that argument - we're saying that people
who would be
- willing to understand the editing applet or, more realistically,
download an editor
- figure out how it all works, and
- figure out how to get data from their GPS into GPX format
(converting from NMEA via GPS Babel or whatever)
and then spend /hours/ trekking around their local area are seriously
going to be put off by a 30-second registration step?