[OSM-talk] Cloudmade: "We are the Wikipedia of maps"

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

    as an OSM community member, I'm taking offence at the following article:

http://techpulse360.com/2009/03/10/startup-cloudmade-wants-to-be-the-wikipedia-of-maps/

The article says that Cloudmade "relies on its OpenStreetMap project", and:

“This is going to be the map of the future,” says founder Steve Coast of 
his company. “We’re the Wikipedia of maps.”

This is of course wrong; OpenStreetMap is no Cloudmade's project, and 
Cloudmade is not the Wikipedia of maps.

Further down, the article suggests that Cloudmade money was somehow 
related to mapping the world:

"But it’s also a daunting task. The company raised $3.5 million from 
Sunstone Capital, but, well, the world is a large place."

And:

"Coast says the goal is to give away the mapping data for free and 
charge for services."

Of course, there is no mapping data that Cloudmade could give away for 
free because they don't own any.

I know that the press always write what they want (or what they think 
they understand) and not necessarily what you tell them. Also, to their 
credit, the Cloudmade web page clearly and correctly states that "We 
source our map data from OpenStreetMap, the community mapping project 
which is making a free map of the world".

However, this is not the first time that the OpenStreetMap project has 
been confused with Cloudmade by the press, and I can hardly imagine that 
  whoever wrote that article did so without relying on Cloudmade 
statements that somehow pointed in that direction.

I would appreciate if Cloudmade PR people, especially in the US, would 
take more care in explaining the situation to the press, or if that is 
too much to ask, then at least refrain from misrepresenting the situation.

If anyone is "the Wikipedia of maps" then it is the OpenStreetMap 
project which exists independently of Cloudmade. A very tiny portion of 
OpenStreetMap data is acquired during Cloudmade-sponsored events for 
which the project is grateful, but that does not give Cloudmade the 
right to act as if they own the project.

I know that in the early days of the web, some access providers touted 
their dial-in plans as if the web was theirs - "buy our package and get 
access to all these cool sites". Maybe it is hard for the public to 
understand, but an effort should be made to say that Cloudmade is an 
access provider, not a content provider.

I'll try to make it a habit to point this out in the comment boxes of 
the relevant web pages if I see articles like that.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"