[OSM-talk] immutable=yes Fwd: DEC Lands

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Russ Nelson wrote:
> Sorry if I wax too philosophic here, but I'm a combiner, not a  
> splitter.

I think you are first and foremost lazy ;-). You want un-editable data 
in OSM not because it benefits OSM in some way but because you are used 
to working with the OSM toolchain and you would like your extra data in 
OSM because this makes things easier for you. Rather than somehow 
setting up a toolchain that draws OSM data from OSM and immutable extra 
data from other sources, you'd prefer to dump everything into OSM 
because it is more convenient for you.

While such laziness often drives great inventions, I think in this case 
your idea is detrimental to OSM. OSM is not a protocol, a hull, a 
container for stuff that people pour in; nothing in OSM has the right to 
remain separate from the rest. What you want to have is OSM as a 
transport medium: Pour in you data and get it out conveniently mixed 
with other stuff. But OSM doesn't do that; if you pour in data, it gets 
assimilated into the system; people build on it, modify it, or delete it.

What you really need is a Mapnik (or other) setup where you can 
conveniently tick various sources - roads and POIs from OSM, immutable 
borders from government agency X, landuse areas from government agency Y 
- and merge them into one map rendering setup. Just because such a 
comfortable solution does not yet exist should not be an excuse to dump 
everything into OSM in a "please don't work with this data, just 
transport it for me" kind of way.

Bye
Frederik

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