[OSM-talk] Things People Say

[Thomas Davie]

On 30 Dec 2011, at 16:15, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On 12/30/11 16:55, Thomas Davie wrote:
>> Perhaps because that's the original, and stated purpose of the
>> project – to make open maps.
> 
> When I started using OSM, the project wasn't making maps; it was making files that you could download and feed into a renderer and then you could see a map.
> 
> I probably saw the potential back then; I saw that you could make maps right there on your computer, and quite possibly I also thought that one could make a slippy map - but it never occurred to me that what I was seeing then was somehow *not* the original purpose. A good 5000 people who joined OSM before me must have seen the same thing.

Everything has to start somewhere.  Just because the best that it was possible to do back then was to download and render, doesn't mean that it's the best we can do now.

>> Pretty much everything you say is based on the premise that the point
>> of the project is to make an enormous collection of map data, and
>> damn actually being able to use it.  This premise is false.
> 
> Where did you get that idea about "the original, and stated purpose" being to "make open maps"? From the Wiki history, I can see that on 26 May 2005, Steve Coast added this sentence as the very first sentence on our main page:
> 
> "OpenStreetMap is a project aimed squarely at providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them."
"Such as Street Maps" ;)

> That was 6.5 years ago, OSM must have had about 500 members back then. I only joined a year later, when that sentence was still up on the Wiki, and today, the sentence has only slightly changed:
> 
> "OpenStreetMap creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them."
Keeping the nice important bit there.

> As I said in another message, SWG are debating core values etc., and before we know it that sentence may read "OpenStreetMap offers map tile downloads free of charge" or something, but most people who have joined the project in the last 6.5 years will probably have read in the very first sentence that OSM says about itself: "OpenStreetMap creates free geographic data".
> 
> If that is indeed false then where can I complain about having been misled for so long? ;)

You've not been misled, you've misread.

Tom Davie