[OSM-talk] Response to A critique of OpenStreetMap

Chris Fleming me at chrisfleming.org
Fri Oct 15 14:53:14 BST 2010


  On 15/10/10 12:30, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Elizabeth Dodd wrote:
>> No, I cannot create the nice map.
>> It doesn't belong in MY skill set.
>
> Fair enough. If you don't have the skills or the computers or the 
> money to create a nice map, then you have to talk someone else into 
> creating a nice map for you.
>
> But I don't think this should be OSM. That would mean diverting 
> resources from creating valuable geodata to creating pretty end 
> products. I would rather see someone else take up that work, using OSM 
> data to create nice maps of all kinds.
>
> I'm not saying it should not be done, but I don't see it as a task for 
> the OSM project. Much as the opencyclemap or the various hiking maps 
> are not organised or funded by the OSM project.
>

I agree that creating a "pretty" map is not at the core of what OSM is 
about, and as time goes on there are more and more options for viewing 
openstreetmap data. However we can all agree that we want to provide 
data, and we want to improve data, and many of us will do whatever we 
can to plug openstreetmap whenever we can.

These people will head straight to the website and probably try and find 
there house; we want to capture these people so that OSM is there first 
choice for online mapping by providing the services that they expect. 
Hopefully over time some of these "casual" users will become editors 
over time. This is how we will continue to grow. I think it would be a 
mistake to ignore these users.

Obviously other users of the data are providing a lot of this I see 
Cyclesteets, Cyclemap, Mapquest and Cloudmade all point back to OSM and 
the editable-ness of the map underneath. But do we really want to leave 
these types of users to external sites?

Cheers
Chris



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