[OSM-talk] Big sponsors (was: WolframAlpha uses OpenStreetMap data)

[Ian Dees]

OTRS => http://otrs.org/ (Open Source Ticket Request System)

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 8:50 PM, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:

>
> On Jun 17, 2010, at 7:45 PM, Anthony wrote:
>
> > OTRS?
>
> huh?
>
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 9:30 PM, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
> > Well let me take that back a bit - actually even doing some very simple
> cleanup of the interface and having a feedback mechanism *at all* would be a
> good first step, as people jumped on my recent OGD post in the comments:
> >
> >        http://opengeodata.org/the-importance-of-timing-to-feedback
> >
> >
> >
> > On Jun 17, 2010, at 7:27 PM, SteveC wrote:
> > > I think you're concentrating on tiles, but that's not really the
> bottleneck I would jump on first.
> > >
> > > The conversation goes like this:
> > >
> > > "steve we have 300 million people a day look at our site and we would
> like to send their edits and feedback to OSM"
> > >
> > > Really it's the API we're talking about. Tiles are just a CDN problem.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Jun 17, 2010, at 7:18 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> > >> Steve,
> > >>
> > >>> They would like to link to us directly but don't think a) we can
> > >>> handle the load and b) don't think it would be a good user experience
> > >>> to dump people on to osm.org, what with the site design.
> > >>
> > >> To paraphrase (not specifically Wolfram, but the unnamed other
> megacorps you're chatting with):
> > >>
> > >> 1. they'd like to link to us directly but our infrastrucutre is too
> weak;
> > >>
> > >> 2. they would not want to give us a shitload of money to improve our
> infrastructure, but could imagine hosting something;
> > >>
> > >> 3. there is fear that the community would view this negatively.
> > >>
> > >> To which I say, I don't think the community has anything against
> someone doing a glorified maps.cloudmade.com; if they have really fast
> servers and maybe even a CDN, can do lots of styles and make the tiles and
> services available under a free-for-all policy. That would be great, and
> would - if given sufficient long-term promise by whoever it is - allow us to
> reduce our tile serving to an experimental capacity, freeing up resources
> for the core database which obviously we must keep operating ourselves.
> > >>
> > >> But there is a logical problem here and that has nothing to do with us
> at all. You say that many would like to link to OSM directly if only OSM had
> sufficient resources. Now assume that some big guy with many enemies, say
> Google, or Microsoft, were to offer super-fat tile serving for OSM as I
> outlined above. We would then scale back our own tile ops to a minimum, and
> their server would be the main OSM tile server, and whenever you go to
> www.osm.org your browser says "connecting to osmtile.google.com" or some
> such.
> > >>
> > >> I think that the community would be less of a problem - I don't think
> many would care if our tiles came from MS or Google or so as long as they
> were unrestricted and the data remained free. But all those other big guys,
> of whom you say that they would like to link to us - would *they* want to
> send their users to get tiles from Google, MS or someone else? Or would the
> "we'd like to link to you but your infrastructure cannot take the load and
> anyway your front page is ugly" then be replaced with "we'd like to link to
> you but you must understand that the 'sponsored by XYZ' on the shiny front
> page is a problem"?
> > >>
> > >> Of course things would be even worse if the big sponsor wanted to put
> the tiles or service under a non-open license (e.g. a license with a
> "noncommercial" component"). That, I think, would reduce overall usefulness
> rather than improving it. Any funded tile serving would have to be more open
> than what we can currently offer, not less.
> > >>
> > >> Bye
> > >> Frederik
> > >>
> > >> --
> > >> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09"
> E008°23'33"
> > >>
> > >
> > > Steve
> > >
> > > stevecoast.com
> > >
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > stevecoast.com
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > talk mailing list
> > talk at openstreetmap.org
> > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
> >
>
> Steve
>
> stevecoast.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20100617/f6fee123/attachment.html>