[OSM-talk] Tagging FOR the renderer

[moltonel 3x Combo]

On 18/05/2015, Daniel Koć <daniel at koć.pl> wrote:
> I think the mission will be accomplished once we have it integrated with
> OSM website somehow, just like we did with routing: there were already a
> few routing services using our data, so we may not care, but for average
> user they were just not here. And so is uMap.

Routing is different in that it is immediately useful to
*contributors*, who can now check that the OSM data is correct for
routing, just like the slippymap is useful to check that the data
looks good. uMap not so much : as a contributor, I'd rather use josm,
taginfo, overpass, or even data dumps.

As nice as it'd be, http://osm.org/ is not trying to be
http://maps.google.com/. It's not trying to be the One True Map Portal
that caters to every needs.

Some reasons off the top of my head, some strong and some weak :
 * The needs of contributors and users can easily conflict, and
priority is/should be given to the contributors.
 * Even without conflicts, the size of the contributor-focused todo
list means that enduser-focused features get constantly pushed back.
Help welcome.
 * Becoming the internet's one-stop map website would require huge
server ressources. Getting the kind of money required to run them
would require huge changes to the way OSM is run, which'd be dangerous
for OSM's freedom.
 * Similarly for manpower requirements; volunteers wouldn't be enough anymore.
 * A healthy ecosystem of commercial users is important for OSM. And
they should be able to do a better job of serving the end-user, so
it's probably a bad idea to compete with their use-case.