[OSM-talk] wikiproject rail?

[Nick Whitelegg]

> As a practical point, without editorial controls or an easy way to start
> mashups, the OSM is probably going to get that data whether people like it
> or not.

Is it really "that hard" to start mashups though? If we can get a system where 
different people at different geographic locations store regional areas (e.g. 
countries or even counties) of planet.osm on their own server, and there's 
half decent (and maybe at this stage, it only needs to be half decent) 
rendering software available, it's easily possible. It's more important to 
get prototype-quality mashups up and running which demonstrate interesting 
uses of OSM as a foundation layer than wait until we have the resources of 
Google. I myself already have such a prototype in the form of Freemap, and 
don't really intend to over-expand the base OSM database with 
walker-orientated meta-data, e.g walk routes, which would be best put in its 
own layer.

As was said in an earlier post today if we can get a package to allow people 
to deploy a read-only, rendering-orientated version of OSM on their own 
servers, and use an API like openlayers, all it should take to set up a 
mashup is the ability to install some software on a server, tweak a config 
file and - perhaps more advanced but necessary for Google mashups too - some 
JavaScript coding.

Nick