[OSM-talk] OSMF to provide commercial tile service? [WAS: something else]

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 10/09/2011 09:59 PM, Kai Krueger wrote:
> One could set up an entirely separate not-for-profit organisation e.g.
> "Openstreetmap-Applications" that is geared towards providing OSM based user
> oriented services, such as tileservers, user friendly map interfaces,... It
> could charge commercial customers a fee proportionally to operating costs
> and potentially offer services for free to non commercial users and
> organisations.

I think this would be a good idea. I'm in the "commercial users" market 
myself but I have occasionally had inquiries that I could not, or did 
not want to, handle; for example, I think there are people who would be 
willing to have an "XAPI for money" service where you pay a very small 
amount for your query but you get your results quickly. Same for what I 
would call a "glorified export tab" where you can export more than OSM 
infrastructure allows, and so on. I believe that these things could be 
viable in the sense that you could pay for servers from the money you get.

> As it would be an entirely different entity, it wouldn't effect current OSMF
> negatively.

Yes. OSMF would have to treat that entity as fully external, and not 
convey any special privileges to it - i.e. there must not be "the 
official OpenStreetMap Applications Group", or someone exclusively 
licensed to use the OSM logo or something. The entity would have to have 
its own funding and its own legal body. Violate any of these rules and 
you are in danger of tarnishing OSMF's credibility and create 
conflict-of-interest situations.

In fact, any number of such entities could already exist; there's no 
reason why OSMF should get involved at all.

> The main people it would harm would be those who are trying to make money
> off of OSM. Although some of them do currently offer a very valuable
> service, the main objective of OSMF should not be to protect commercial
> interests of OSM, so competing with other commercial OSM entities should not
> be an exclusion reason.

I think, as far as commercial services go, there's enough business for 
everyone to pay their rent. Sometimes I think that existing commercial 
entities should perhaps have a kind of closed group to talk among 
themselves - an "OSM Small Business Forum" if you will. Generally, I 
don't perceive there to be a lot of competition - the opposite is true, 
I often send potential clients to someone whom an outsider might think a 
competitor but whom I know to be better than myself at what that 
particular client wants - and vice versa, "competitors" send clients to 
me. The kind of low-cost bare-bone service provider that you envisage 
would be a welcome addition to that ecosystem.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"