[OSM-talk] Funding of three infrastructure projects : Nominatim, osm2pgsql, Potlatch 2

James james2432 at gmail.com
Sun Aug 2 14:16:53 UTC 2020


Personally I use Linux and I fail to see why funding an application that
isn't multiplatform. I choose to use linux as scripting/data manipulation
is easier than windows.

I will not install adobe air as it's discontinued on linux since
2011(security bugs anyone?).  Development and bug fixes on AIR have come to
a crawl on other platforms, if you can't seen it's impending death with
Web2.0 as well as web assembly, clearly you cannot read the market.

On Sun., Aug. 2, 2020, 9:53 a.m. john whelan, <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:

> If Air is proprietary and an Adobe product I strongly suggest avoiding it
> purely from a security point of view.  Adobe does not have a good
> reputation in the security world.  Comments certainly have been made about
> Flash.
>
> I don't think we should be encouraging the installation of software that
> could cause problems for our mappers.
>
> I accept that for many who know potlatch well there is a cost of learning
> something new and many are experienced editors who we'd like to see
> continue but there are tradeoffs and I think security of the software we
> are asking people to install should be taken into account.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> On Sun, Aug 2, 2020, 08:54 pangoSE <pangose at riseup.net> wrote:
>
>> Is this the platform you are targeting?
>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_AIR
>>
>> Its proprietary which makes it prone to the same fate as Flash Player.
>> Why even consider such a move?
>>
>> I never use nonfree software like flash so I never tried P2. What is so
>> special about it? Is there something hindering adding that specialness (as
>> a plugin perhaps) to JOSM?
>>
>> The JOSM devs seem very helpful, supporting and have a friendly culture.
>>
>> I suggest letting this code die as it lures people to install nonfree and
>> therefore dangerous software. Alternatively that you team up with your 20
>> mio edits-peers and port the code to something that does not require
>> proprietary software.
>>
>> You did not present a single usecase that is not covered already by one
>> of the other free software editors so I'm guessing you will have a hard
>> time convincing your peers to team up around yet another editor, but I
>> might be wrong.
>>
>> I don't care about your ROI arguments because they are based on the not
>> outspoken premise that economics of software development is more important
>> when making decisions than freedom, which is false IMO.
>> If you had compared 2 free software projects like iD and JOSM that run
>> without any proprietary code, then it might have been relevant.
>>
>> I suggest declining support of any software project that is or requires
>> proprietary software to run.
>>
>> Cheers
>> pangoSE
>> PS I use 4 different editors to edit in the database: JOSM, OsmAnd,
>> StreetComplete and rarely iD.
>>
>>
>> Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> skrev: (2 augusti 2020 10:28:22
>> CEST)
>>>
>>> Skyler Hawthorne wrote:
>>> > Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I think using any funds at all to
>>> > continue support for a tool that 1% of editors use would be wasteful.
>>> > Flash is, for all intents and purposes, a dead technology. This
>>> > money is better spent on other uses.
>>>
>>> The entire point is to move away from a dead technology (Flash Player)
>>> to a supported one (AIR).
>>>
>>> On the percentage stat, it's worth bearing in mind that the P2 project
>>> is by a long chalk the smallest sum (€2500) of the three that OSMF is
>>> proposing here. As a point of comparison, iD was initially developed with a
>>> $575,000 grant from the Knight Foundation in 2012, so roughly $646,000 now.
>>> Very conservatively estimating the cost of employing 1-2 developers to code
>>> on iD since then, you get a development cost of roughly €0.004 per (2020)
>>> changeset for iD vs $0.0002 for P2, which is kind of fun.
>>>
>>> (I'm actually pleasantly surprised that P2 still has so many changesets
>>> - 20 million last year, and I'm guessing high teens this year - given how
>>> difficult it is to get Flash Player running in most browsers these days.
>>> That suggests that P2's users are using it because they want to do so, not
>>> because they are magically unaware of the existence of other editors. I
>>> suspect if you could find another way of getting 20 million edits for €2500
>>> then we would snap your hand off.)
>>>
>>> Looking forward, and continuing the theme of ROI, the other benefit of
>>> the project is that it enables development work to continue on P2. The
>>> reason I have bid for funding for this, for the first time in 14 years of
>>> developing editors for OpenStreetMap, is that it will take a solid chunk of
>>> sustained work to do the AIR conversion and a bunch of other stuff I
>>> believe will make P2 more sustainable into the future, and there is a hard
>>> deadline for that sustained work (i.e. Flash Player switch-off at the end
>>> of the year). It's not a project that can just be done in evenings here and
>>> there. That enables further, unfunded developments in the future, and in
>>> turn I hope the tradition of other editors taking inspiration from P2 can
>>> continue - it's not for nothing that JOSM has a Potlatch 2 style and a
>>> "Potlatch mode" for editing.
>>>
>>> But you are, of course, welcome to develop and put forward a project to
>>> OSMF which you believe will have more bang for the buck. "Other uses" is
>>> easy to type but doesn't actually mean anything until you identify what
>>> those uses are, and crucially, find someone who is prepared to do them.
>>>
>>> Richard
>>>
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