[OSM-talk] Software development - most pressing issues

[Martijn van Exel]

Hi all,

The Dutch chapter is writing up a funding proposal to send out soon.  
In it, we are going to include a section for software development. The  
underlying idea is to be able to catalyse software development  
necessary to ensure smooth operation of OpenStreetMap in the near  
future. To give this some body, I'd like your thoughts on what the  
most pressing issues currently are.

We discussed this in the Dutch context which is kind of specific, in  
that the Dutch dataset is almost complete now thanks to tha AND data  
that was incorporated back in September:
* The Dutch OSM dataset attractive for commercial use on a nationwide  
basis. Therefore, we need to anticipate availability / performance  
issues. Part of this is to be accomplished in software.
* The focus shifts - away from acquiring new data to improving the  
quality of existing data. This creates the need for a kind of 'mobile  
lightweight JOSM'.

But these are just some issues that arise in the specific Dutch  
context. I really would like to see a kind of 'top 3' of concrete  
software-related issues to include in the funding proposal. To make a  
strong case, the issues should be as SMART[1] as possible.

Thanks for your input on this.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_%28project_management%29
-- 
Martijn van Exel -+- osm at vanexel.eu -+- http://www.openstreetmap.nl/