[OSM-talk] Things People Say

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 12/28/11 14:56, Thomas Davie wrote:
> I think this actually may be an opportunity for OSM to make some
> money.  Could we not (given the appropriately motivated person, and I
> freely admit I'm not he) set up distributing images for servers that
> are able to run right out the box... Want to run OpenStreetMap?
> Download this iso, clone it into a VM or onto a real machine, boot,
> access http://<machines-ip>/ and there's your map, all set up and
> ready to go.

There's "TileDrawer" already, where you can download ready-made Amazon 
images for free, and there's a series of Ubuntu packages by Kai Krueger 
that you just have to install to get a tile server. Or, for 
smaller-scale operations, you can even use Maperitive for an 
out-of-the-box solution. And many of us, including myself, spend time 
answering questions for free on the lists, on help.osm, and elsewhere.

The reason that people pay for this is not that they want a CD-ROM or a 
download link; these things exist. The reason that people pay for this 
is that they want customer service. Someone to tell them what hardware 
to buy; someone to ask them what they want and recommend a good strategy 
to achieve that with minimal cost; someone to fix a problem when it occurs.

If OSMF wanted to do this then they'd probably have to hire people to 
provide the service, and that would bring with it a considerable 
adminsitrative overhead and fixed costs and likely detract them from 
what they should be doing.

Bye
Frederik