[OSM-talk] Java and freedom

Martyn Welch martyn at welchs.me.uk
Tue May 23 12:05:15 BST 2006


On Tuesday 23 May 2006 10:25, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> Quoting Martyn Welch <martyn at welchs.me.uk>:
> > [load of stuff snipped]
>
> I could (and started to) write a very intemperate fisking of this
> (hey, I like Robert Fisk) but it's not remotely helpful, so I'll
> restrain myself.
>

I'll attempt to do the same or take it off list ;-)

> Please, please, please remember that not everyone has the same views,
> the same level of knowledge, or the same background as you. There is a
> place for converting people to your cause, but it's not the OSM
> mailing lists. 

I was merely stating my views on a mailing list in which others have done 
exactly the same, including yourself.

> Posting <rant>...</rant>, and a lot of criticism 

I apologise if anything I said offended anyone.

> interspersed with assumptions ("likely", "could be", "probably") might
> perhaps convert me to your beliefs, but it's more likely just to
> frighten off any wavering newbies on this list.
>

As someone who has only had a GPS unit for about 4 weeks, I'd concider myself 
a newbie with regards to OSM.

> For my level of technical knowledge and chosen OS, none of the
> existing editors are usable. YMMV and I hope it does. I'm simply
> proposing to do something about it which needn't affect you or anyone
> in the slightest if you don't want it to. At the same time, I hope
> that the few things I _do_ know about will enable me to make it an
> attractive, simple editing solution for some other people in some
> other circumstances, and hence increase the amount of open geodata in
> the world.
>

I respectfully agree and disagree. 

I agree that you should be free to design a solution and hope that you achieve 
your goal. However as someone who has recently started contributing to the 
project I'd like to mention that the largest barrier I faced was deciding 
which of the available packages would do what I felt I needed to do. My point 
was that increasing the number of available editors will make this decision 
harder, where as increasing the utility of those available will make this 
choice easier. I say this as a newbie.

As for Nick's original point:

Sun's Java implementation is not available to many people (for example, due to 
licensing reasons or lack of a suitable binary). Many Linux variants have gcj 
and Classpath packages available to them. They also provide a windows port. 
These are provided in a way that _lowers_ the above entry barriers to use and 
thus potentially allow more people to contribute. This however requires those 
writing the applications to take care not to use unimplemented features and 
hence the reason for his post, a position I'd like to support.

As you said yourself, you had to buy an upgrade to OS X to be able to run 
JOSM. This is the kind of case he is trying to avoid.

Martyn

-- 

Martyn Welch (welchm at comp.lancs.ac.uk)

PGP Key : http://ubicomp.lancs.ac.uk/~martyn/pgpkey/




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