[OSM-talk] Measuring success of OSM

[Brendan Morley]

In the interests of healthy debate,

I disagree with some of the sentiments around imports.  In particular that imports reduce the amount of OSM contributors, and that that is a Bad Thing.

IMHO success should be measured by the accuracy of the data (to reality) and to the pervasiveness of its use by people and corporates.  What if suddenly 
Ordnance Survey merged all their excrutiating detail of data under OSM terms?  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?  I say good, because there will always be 
need for tracking of changes.

Perhaps OSM would turn into a "heads up" service for government - you know, a local would identify a tree planted "somewhere around this GPS reading" and 
then an OS employee would know to come around and get a more accurate fix.  I'm only speculating here, I don't know how OS actually detects changes to its 
dataset.

If OSM ever reached that level of detail, then it'd be pointless for Google to "steal" our data, they'd always be playing catchup.


Brendan