[OSM-talk] advertising
Frederik Ramm
frederik at remote.org
Mon Jul 2 22:15:56 BST 2007
Hi,
> Having said that, I do have some concerns. As a community we need to see
> some more about the Foundation controlling the servers that house our
> data and control how the world views this data.
An more modern alternative to "trying to get the foundation to represent
what the community wants" might be "trying to eliminate centralism as
much as possible".
Now this is again something that's way in the future technically, but
imagine for a moment we didn't have a central database; imagine our data
was somehow "floating" in a kind of peer-to-peer network. Anyone could
set up a server that accepts changes and distributes them, of course
there would be conflicts and there would need to be ways to resolve
them; there would not be "one single truth" but perhaps a few of them.
There wouldn't be a "central" website where you have to log on.
Today the data is open and the license makes it impossible for anyone,
even if he controls the server, to take published data away again; but
still the server operators have considerable power, e.g. designing the
web page, being able to deny or revoke user accounts, etc. (they also
might have the *obligation* to exercise those powers in some cases to
avoid legal threats).
Distribution of "current" data for readonly purposes has started with
the planet file; we will no doubt see distribution of live data and
maybe even history data for readonly purposes. Distribution of data for
read/write purposes, and maybe even relinquishing the "master server"
idea altogheter, is a wholly different beast.
But maybe, since many of us are rather technically minded, it is more
satisfying to work towards this goal than working towards some complex
legal entity that somehow channels the community's wishes and controls
the Holy Openstreetmap Master Database accordingly...
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frederik at remote.org ## N49°00.09' E008°23.33'
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