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

[Frederik Ramm]

Lars,

Lars Aronsson wrote:
> If you asked the same journalist to interview you about Geofabrik, 
> that would have a much better effect for the public understanding 
> of OpenStreetMap's role than your current rants.

It has been pointed out that Steve, apart from being a CM manager, is 
also the founder of the project and thus has to juggle various roles. 
Please then accept that besides running Geofabrik, I, too, am an active 
member of the OSM community and entitled to voice my opinion in this 
capacity. I think it is only normal for me to feel offended if an 
article makes it sound like the whole project was more or less the 
business success of some US company rather than the community effort it 
is and which I am a part of.

I'm prepared to accept that it was neither Steve's intention nor his 
wrongdoing that this article was published in the manner it was. But I 
can assure you that if, as a Geofabrik manager, I read an article that 
suggests that "Geofabrik was the Wikipedia of maps", then I would either 
write a comment myself or ask someone else to write a comment to set the 
record straight - if only to avoid criticism like the one I started the 
thread with. And that takes us back to your question about my intention: 
My intention was that such mistakes are best avoided, and if they 
happen, are not shrugged off but corrected, at least as long as there is 
an easy way to do it. (If such a mis-representation happened in a 
written journal and I would have to request correction in writing, maybe 
I would not consider it worth the effort.)

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

> This indeed seems to be Steve's goal.  He uses OpenStreetMap for 
> the first part and Cloudmade for the second. If the journalist had 
> only changed from Cloudmade to Steve's name in the second 
> sentence, the article would have been much better: Steve Coast 
> hopes to do the same (that Wikipedia has done) for maps.

Well I don't know about Sweden but where I live the project has 
progressed far beyond the point where you would say that "with 
OpenStreetMap, Steve Coast intends to <whatever>". You could have used 
such words three years ago.

Bye
Frederik

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