[OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping

[moltonel 3x Combo]

On 15/06/2015, Arun Ganesh <arun.planemad at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Not at all. I'm asking a contributor who feels that his local
>> community is not very strong if there's anything specific he thinks
>> could improve things.
>
> The very simple answer is that most people who know English and can afford
> a smartphone already use Google maps which work reasonably well in India.
> OSM is atleast 10 years behind in coverage and there is just a handful like
> me who have the luxury of free time who can see the long term benefits of
> contributing to open source. To the rest, they already have working maps,
> so why bother.

Fair enough. Although a quick mapcompare session shows that GM has
nowhere near the quality that it has in Europe/America, so it should
be less work for OSM to overtake GM in India than it took in Europe (I
know, if the community is tiny, "less overall work" is still way more
work for each individual).

You point out an interesting bit of information though: GM is for
English speakers. Do you render a Hindi (and other languages)
slippymap ? Provide Hindi OSMand and Garmin maps ? That might catch
the attention of many users. In Ireland we have an all-Gaelic map
(http://maps.openstreetmap.ie/?zoom=9&layers=00BFFFFFF&lat=52.92847&lon=-7.65252)
that attracts people from outside OSM.