[OSM-talk] OpenMaps App Blocked By OpenStreetMap

[Richard Fairhurst]

Zsombor Szabó wrote:
> This way browsing and bulk downloading users can clearly be 
> identified on the server side and throttled or banned if necessary.

It's good that you're making changes, but there's two misapprehensions that
need clearing up.

Firstly, our sysadmins are unpaid volunteers who are already busy enough
maintaining OSM's servers for mappers. They do not have the time to
repeatedly identify and block individual users. As a result, individual apps
(like OpenMaps) can be expected to be uniformly blocked if the behaviour or
sheer number of their users is causing a problem.

Secondly, the tile usage policy does _not_ say "if you use proper headers,
don't download in bulk, and avoid z17-19, you'll be ok". It says "you must
use proper headers, must not download in bulk, and must avoid z17-19" - but
even that does not automatically mean your app is ok. As the "Heavy Users"
section explains, apps that generate significant traffic must use another
provider and may be blocked without notice, even if they fulfil the above
requirements.

Please bear in mind that, even if we wanted to offer free tiles to every
commercial app in the world, our hosts would not permit us to do so. Nor is
it OSM's role to give OpenMaps a competitive advantage by providing it with
a free server when (for example) the OffMaps developers offer similar apps
but pay for their own servers. (Of course, if any individuals wanted to
start a project to provide such a free tile server, I'm sure it would be
very popular.)

Richard



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