[OSM-talk] We Need to Stop Google's Exploitation of Open Communities

[Nic Roets]

Let's not loose sight of a few facts / trends w.r.t. sub Saharan Africa:
1. The continent is not experiencing the same demographic dividend as
other emerging economies. Birthrates will remain high for at least
another 50 years. AIDS is decimating the economically active
population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

2. African governments are simply not building the required infrastructure.

3. The mobile phone has increase productivity in Africa more than all
previous inventions combined. Farmers no longer need to make slow and
expensive journeys to find out what price the market will pay for
their crops. Migrant workers can send money to their families over
long distances.

4. A dismally small percentage of Africans can read maps. But
augmented reality-type applications will completely change that.

5. OSM is simply not successful enough in Africa to cover the
tremendous opportunities presented in points 3 and 4. Lack of cheap
Internet access on the African continent should take most of the
blame. But it doesn't help that so many OSM apps are not available in
Africa (Skobbler, ORS, OSM-3D etc).

So I'm really glad about Google's efforts.

--
Note that if you use Google to search for "Mapping party", the top hit
is the the OSM wiki. So it's public knowledge that we invented and
perfected the concept.

Regards,
Nic

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 5:27 PM, Mikel Maron <mikel_maron at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/04/11/1635
>
> == Mikel Maron ==
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