[OSM-talk] Vector maps for Android

[Peter Wendorff]

Am 29.11.2011 12:30, schrieb Parveen Arora:
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 4:33 PM, Janko Mihelić<janjko at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Your question is the same as if someone asked "why isn't there an official
>> Linux; not Ubuntu, not Mint, not Debian, but simply official Linux
>> distribution".
> No doubt this is a good approach, but the moment when you will ask
> some one to recommend any of one among all there will be lot of
> different opinions, and there are approximately 500 distros of Linux
> available which I think is not required and is wastage of resources,
> time and energy.
A nice one would not simply give you one specific distribution, because 
you want to use Linux.
Instead there would be some questions: what do you want to do with it? 
use it as a windows replacement for office work, or for driver 
developement? doing graphical stuff or running a server - and so on.
With regard to the answers there may be one or a few chosen 
distributions the asked person would give you probably, and that's 
completely okay.

If I ask you, which computer game to buy as a christmas present, you 
would ask back, who should get it, too, and don't recommend the same for 
a hardcore gamer as you would recommend for my 5 year old sister - and 
for me, that sounds reasonable.
>> Open source and open data don't work that way. A healthy ecosystem with lots
>> of apps is the goal.
> Nothing is always perfect, One have to always work to things better and better.
> If you think the current system is absolutely right and there is no
> need of any change then it is ok.
>
> But someone on this thread told me that OSM is a loose community so I
> wondered why its like that, Can't we come as a strong community or
> organisation.
OSM worldwide is a loose community, but there are some strong local 
communities and some individual connections between different local 
communities on top of that.
And that's fine. It's not more complex than necessary, but it's possible 
to keep different opinions and styles for different groups.

Some people want to meet regularly - and do so, others want to do their 
own thing individually most of the time.
Some people want to start mapping projects with a specific goal, others 
feel good by continuously contributing small stuff.
Next people (but only a few) are happy by fixing bugs in their lunch 
break, but not doing anything else.

If you want an "official" OSM application - what should it be able to do?
viewing osm maps? that's possible with hundrets of applications - and 
with the osm.org website, too.
editing? There are people who prefer JOSM and others who prefer 
potlatch. Both are highly connected and associated with osm without 
being "official".
routing? What kind of routing? How fast? online? offline?

If you would want to make an official app supporting everything, I 
promise, this is not stable for a long time, as it's very much 
maintenance work.
If you would want to do that supporting all(tm) platforms (android, 
iphone, windows mobile, windows, linux, mac-os desktops, ...) it's much 
much more difficult, and if you would not want to support some of these 
platforms, but call it "official" you have to explain, why osm 
"officially" supports one platform, but the other one.

I don't think, anything would get better by this.

regards
Peter