[OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

[Johan C]

OSM has two choices: make a strategic plan, or maintaining an organic grow
path. I love the way OSM developed so far, delivering great products such
as Mapnik, JOSM and mkgmap, having sysadmins doing a great job in keeping
the database available etcetera. It's also great to see that OSM now has
more than 1 million registered users. However, the number of users editing
( http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries ) is not
increasing in the same manner. Being involved for over three years now in
the project, I have the assumption that the actual use of OSM in apps or
PND's is not rising very quickly, probably also caused by competition by
better products such as Google maps (yes, I know that OSM is a database and
not an app). And I noticed that trying to get advanced features in OSM,
like lane assist, is really troublesome, So, my question is: how do we want
Openstreetmap to evolve in the next years. The Wikimedia Foundation
launched a strategic planning process in 2009:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page which, in 2010, resulted in a
collaborative vision for the movement till 2015.

In analogy, I would like to see the OSM Foundation to start such a process
with the OSM community and others outside the community. And once there's a
vision and a strategy for 2020, money might/will be needed to carry out the
strategy.

Cheers, Johan

2013/1/7 Pierre Béland <infosbelas-gps at yahoo.fr>

> I agree that we should have tools to facilitate adding or updating POI's,
> including with a smartphone.
>
> But we should not forget that OSM is more then a commercial map. This is a
> community map and we have to show the various activities our contributors
> are engaged in.
>
> I would also like to easily find a doctor, a community center, etc. And it
> should be easy to select from a list without the complexity of OSM tags.
>
> It would also be interesting to have POI layers grouped  by various
> sectors like restaurants, hosting, stores, medical services, public
> services, attractions, etc.
>
> Pierre
>
>   ------------------------------
> *De :* Clifford Snow <clifford at snowandsnow.us>
> *À :*
> *Cc :* Talk Openstreetmap <talk at openstreetmap.org>
> *Envoyé le :* Lundi 7 janvier 2013 12h20
> *Objet :* Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look
>
> I agree. We have so much good data, we just need to improve the map
> interface so more people come to OSM first.
>
> My friend Jeff Meyer just commented the other day that he wondered why we
> don't have an easy way for businesses to add their establishments to OSM. I
> know that Yahoo and Bing have it.  Last year I helped my local gym out.
> They moved two blocks. Of course, OSM was fix on the day of the move. Bing
> and Yahoo had an easy web page to enter the new information. But if he had
> to go through the process of making the change in OSM it would have never
> happened. We can and shouldn't expect everyone to have the same interest in
> learn how to map. But we should make it easy to add and update data for
> businesses.
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 3:04 AM, Paweł Paprota <ppawel at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> Hello Clifford,
>
> Very interesting e-mail. It seems that as the project grows, there is
> more and more people feeling like there should be some kind of "next
> level" that OSM as a project and community should reach. I agree with that.
>
>
>  It seems to me that OSM needs a full time staff that can work with
> the community to build OSM for the future. I would think that at the
> rate we are growing, we need to be planning for a much bigger
> future.
>
>
> Just a few days ago I replied to a mailing list thread about OSM's
> "market share" with my thoughts on precisely this topic you mention in
> the quote above:
>
> http://lists.openstreetmap.**org/pipermail/talk/2013-**January/065555.html<http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-January/065555.html>
>
> I am a developer so my area of interest is technical but I am sure that
> in other areas like working with the community, communication and
> "advertising", data (handling vandalisms, imports) there is a similar
> need for more involvement.
>
> Sure it would be great to have the project run on volunteers - money
> (some people being paid) thrown in the mix always causes problems at
> some point - but I think it's becoming clear that OSM cannot reach that
> next level without some sort of push... After all, it's normal in other
> large projects/organizations that some people are working full time on
> it. Perhaps OSM needs to evolve a little bit more to embrace such model?
>
> The other problem is much simpler - where do you get the money from? I
> thought about OSM Foundation getting involved and trying to get some
> funding for the project. Not sure how that would work legally but at
> this point there has to be a way to get money for development - it's
> clear that many stakeholders and users of OSM want to see the project
> moving forward and I'm sure some of them are willing to donate money.
>
> Paweł
>
>
>
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>
>
>
> --
> Clifford
>
> OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
>
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