[OSM-talk] WolframAlpha uses OpenStreetMap data

[Tirkon]

SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:

>...
>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. Of those that would like to help us scale the servers, they don't want to be seen to try to 'take over' by hosting OSM in their data centers ...

Sorry, if I am disturbing, when the "big boys" are talking. ;-) I do
not have clue concerning the technical stuff. Could we describe this
with those words?: Free Data - proprietary distributed and collected?

>... but can't really justify throwing money at us when they have perfectly good resources we could use. 
>...
>Basically there's a big decision tree that I have half worked out that follows from 'big company wants to *significantly* help OSM but how?'. I've been through this decision tree about 6 or 7 times now I think. It would be interesting to graph it, and each end point node in that tree is 'we can't do that because of X'. By '*significant*', I mean throwing millions of dollars at the problem (OSM) because they're already throwing tens to hundreds of millions at NT/TA and so OSM a viable side bet. Of course you could say 'start small' but the problem there is that it's usually much easier to release large resources than small in large organisations.
>...

But would it not be the way out of the dilemma, if the OSM-Foundation
could do something comparable, like the Wikimedia Verein Deutschland
(Wikimedia "Foundation" Germany)?

They use the sponsors money to pay software engineers. These engeneers
do not take part to things, that directly affect the content of
Wikipedia or the other projects. For instance these engineers develope
the Mediawiki Software and help the voluntaries of the community to
improve the data distribution. The last word what is done or not is
made by the community, not by the Wikimedia Verein and not by the paid
developers.

I think, it would be comforting for the community to know, that they
do not have only the data but also the own power to distribute and
collect them. Further many of them would not like to give their
virtual OSM identity to someone else, who possibly is able to join
this identity with another ones. Thats one of the reasons, why they
support free projects and not proprietary ones. Paid developers could
help OSM with all that missions and thus to grow faster. And thus
earning money from whoever in order to pay developers would probably
be accepted by the community.


Possibly Wikimedia/Wikipedia could be a technical partner, that is
accepted by the OSM community. They run a worldwide service of their
own very well. Probably they are the free project with the most
experierce concerning that stuff. Thus: Could someone explain me, how
much more traffic OSM has to handle compared to Wikipedia? Would their
way work for OSM as well?