[OSM-talk] will we be nuked from orbit?

[Ulf Lamping]

Richard Fairhurst schrieb:
> Oh, come off it. OSM is nowhere near perfect, but we've come on in  
> leaps and bounds.
>   
We'll never be perfect and that's ok for me ;-)
> I didn't spend n months on Potlatch for "cool new stuff": after all,  
> it doesn't do anything that JOSM doesn't. I spent n months on it so  
> that there was an easy, shiny choice for the novice and the impatient  
> (of whom I'm one!).
>
> And maybe it is your HO that it's "no real choice", but the amount of  
> people who came up to me at SOTM and said "I don't use Potlatch, but  
> my dad/brother/uncle/dog does" - which is _exactly_ what it was meant  
> for - suggests that there are plenty of people who don't share that  
> opinion. This weekend my project is making it usable by schoolkids.
>   
Well, yes, it's my personal feeling that potlach is only for basic use 
(maybe I'm ignorant here). However, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying 
that potlatch is useless and the fact that it's one of the two editors 
that survived the 0.4 API update, makes it clear to me that there is a 
user base. I'm just not using it personally, mostly because I don't want 
to upload my GPS tracks - and in this case potlatch becomes useless :-)
> Mapnik and all the effort we've put into the cartography; Etienne's  
> wizard new stuff on Osmarender 5; that's all shininess. So, in a way,  
> is the amount of effort Jon Burgess and Tom Hughes are putting into  
> fine-tuning the servers and the API so that real people can use it.
>
> Have you forgotten what OSM was like a year ago?! Come on.
>   
Well, I wasn't with the project a year ago ;-)

Of course, my post oversimplified things, so sorry if I offended you - 
that wasn't my intention!

My point was: If we have to compete with Google and TomTom, ease of use 
(and server reliability :-) will be the key to not get left behind that 
competition ...

Regards, ULFL