[OSM-talk] open satnav hardware

[Nic Roets]

> and others i suspect). i don't want to live in the shadow of
> MS/navman/etc., hacking and re-tasking their undocumented hardware, i
> want to stand alone.

Initially you mentioned the price issue, but this is a valid reason to
steer clear of WinCE. And yes, my test application has minor problems
that may well be due to buggy / inconsistent MS code. But the warning
signs on OpenMoko.com tells me the Neo1973 is no different.

There is a third reason why people contribute to opensource projects,
namely to contribute to the knowledge base of humankind (and perhaps
advance the state of the art). It does not really matter what
operating system you're using for your opensource interactive
navigation software, as long as it's relatively operating system
independand.

> there is currently no method (that i know of, please correct me if i
> am wrong), that allows an average person, with little to no technical
> expertise, to obtain a gps navigation device with 'free' map data on
> it.

A number of projects has kicked off in the last 3 months or so. It
will take time for them to become user friendly.

> if we do not make this data accessible to the general public, by

OSM is changing at tremendous rate. Remember the chaos of the rails
port earlier this year ? We had another API change after that. And the
planet file is growing much faster than Moore's law.