[OSM-talk] Things People Say

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 12/30/11 11:26, Kai Krueger wrote:
> There is a second aspect to this too though, motivation. If every time
> someone suggests some improvements into the consumer side of things, they
> get shot down by the "oldtimers" and other people who decide what happens in
> the project, because they want to stay as geeky as possible and not adapt to
> becoming more consumer oriented, then the motivation to code any feature in
> that direction is close to zero.

There's a lot of untrue statements in that long sentence, but I would 
like to concentrate on the overall untrue-ness:

"If <OSM doesn't want to be what I would like it to be> then <the 
motivation to code ... is close to zero>."

This couldn't be more wrong. If *I* had a great idea for a map platform, 
and I suggested that to OSM, and those grey-haired conservative OSM 
oldtimer geek bastards said "no thanks we'd rather remain small and 
unknown", then of course the first thing I would do is set it up myself, 
attract all the consumers to *my* site and then smile at OSM when for 
every 1000 visitors they get, I get a million!

As I said in one of my earlier postings; if you want to make a consumer 
map platform based on OSM, what's to stop you? OSM delivers data, you 
package it and make a great experience out of it. It doesn't even have 
to be you alone, or a MapQuest-like enterprise. Start a project - the 
"open cartography project" or the "open map portal" or the "free map 
network" or whatever. Gather UI whizkids, cartography buffs, build a 
nice consumer-oriented site; team up with naturalearthdata.com... all 
this is possible *today*, and is possible *with* (not against!) 
OpenStreetMap.

Of course, if your answer to the above is "well people might not have 
the resources..." then let me tell you that OSM doesn't have resources 
coming out of their ears either; if you have a great idea that you feel 
you cannot pull off yourself but you need OSM resources to pull it off, 
then we're back at exactly what Simon said - "I would like you to make 
my idea happen".

I am absolutely not against anyone packaging OSM into a nice, free, 
open, versatile, flexible, consumer-oriented, service-desk-equipped, 
all-singing, all-dancing map portal.

I am just against diverting *our* resources which we desperately need to 
maintain and edit our data, keep our databases running smoothly, work on 
data modeling and tagging and tools to help mappers fix bugs and have a 
good data quality, work on licensing and editors and deal with vandalism 
and policy and all that, into trying to look like a map portal. Which we 
just aren't.

> There is probably not much that can kill motivation to work on a project in
> ones own free time more than getting told your effort isn't wanted and then
> having to fight for getting something included for years...

I don't get this whole idea of "getting something included". I really 
don't. I mean look at the opencyclemap, for example. Andy set that up 
himself and nobody fought for including anything; a while ago OSM came 
to him asking whether they could use his tiles on the main page (or 
maybe he was prodded by lots of people to offer his tiles to OSM).

The only reason why you want to fight for something to be included is if 
it is a drain on resources (and you'd rather have it drain OSM's 
resources than your own), or something that nobody would care for 
otherwise and where you hope that OSM's popularity will give it a boost.

> As long as there remains a hostile
> environment to these things,

I don't think it is a good choice of words. Let's just say the idea and 
the environment don't match. Fresh air is a nice environment for me to 
be in but hostile to fish; that doesn't mean fresh air is bad, it just 
isn't right for fish. And neither are fish bad; they just do better in 
water.

When ideas pop up on what OSM could be, some of them will fit OSM and 
some won't. That doesn't mean that OSM is somehow generally hostile, or 
some ideas are somehow generally bad. It's just that *this* project with 
*these* people and *these* resources might not be the right match for 
every idea.

For me, the idea of a user friendly map portal (with a nice brand name 
and matching apps, with maps, routing, geocoding, aerial imagery, 
streetview imagery and all) is not a *bad* idea, and if someone made 
such a portal they should certainly be encouraged to use OSM for it. 
It's just that I don't think OSM has the spare resources to become such 
a portal, and I think it would place an undue burden on those other 
activities we have on our plates if we were to aspire to that. Because 
for every 1000 mappers we have asking for a new feature in Potlatch, 
we'd have a million consumers asking for some feature on the web site to 
make it more "user friendly", and guess what that would logically mean 
for resource allocation.

I used to say that we are the open alternative to TeleAtlas or Navteq, 
not the open alternative to Google. Now that Google starts ditching 
those providers and making their own maps, the comparison is harder to 
understand and I have to go looking for something else.

Bye
Frederik