[OSM-talk] advertising

[Christoph Eckert]

Hi,

> This is silly. For long term sustainability the domain (and anything
> else needed by the project) has to be "owned" by a legal entity that
> is not a person. Consider the "owner gets hit by a bus" scenario.

agreed.

[...]

> I honestly don't see why OSMF needs a website at all, but if it does
> it would probably be good to have a seperate one (run by the same
> servers, ofcourse :) ). btw, Openstreetmap.nl was registered directly
> by Vrijschrift.

The basic idea is that openstreetmap.org is the main page of an 
international project, not a national OSMF. What gets placed there or 
even not should therefore be decided by the community, not a national 
foundation.

I'd not complain about the ads if OSMF would have a national domain like 
openstretmap.co.uk. If we had further national foundations who run 
something like openstreetmap.fr, I'd not complain if they placed ads in 
their maps.

Steve founded and grew this cool project under the name and domain 
openstreetmap.org. It's OK if it now gets assigned to the national OSMF 
as it is not possible to found an international foundation. But then 
the OSMF should IMO resist the temptation to use it as their own 
homepage and to place ads on the map without any community 
consideration.

Just my two cents,

ce