@Wynndale as noted, you can still use ELI if you so wish.

Technically the contents/attributes of the JOSM imagery list are very similar with ELI so there is no functionality being lost for 3rd party apps that use one or the other.

The fact that I’m at least to dumb to understand just how the JOSM devs intended imagery selection work in a reasonable fashion (and I’ve been using it over a decade), is just an implementation issue and doesn’t have anything to do with the actual contents.

Both systems are struggling with the number of entries, and I suspect over time that we will have to move to an API based system for retrieval.

I don’t really think that a singular quirk, which in the end is due to a disagreement between Andy and Matt on architectural issues, is anything else than an exception to the rule.

I think there is no disagreement that having a selection of tools would be nice, but is it realistic? The economic realities would say no. Lets just restrict ourselves to the 2nd most popular editor, JOSM, for the purpose of the discussion (because other examples are even more extreme),

A rough estimate is that JOSM (development, maintenance and infrastructure) costs 20 Euro / head / year, iD on the other hand 2 Euro. With increasing market share of iD and stagnating, if not going down, number of JOSM users this will get worse over time.

Now currently JOSM users outstrip the iD users in actual edits made, but the trends there are clear too, and that will accelerate with more feature parity in iD (actual feature parity is not required, there are likely only a handful of missing features in iD that are used by more than a handful of JOSM users).

In any case so while right now a case could be made for the OSMF covering the costs for JOSM. as it intends to do with iD in the medium term (1-2 years), the case will be non-existent.

A different way to look at it from an end user pov: 2 Euro a year is something you could conceivably collect from a large number of iD users, 20 Euros not.

To be clear the tl;dr version is I was being fairly arbitrary with my list, there are obviously a lot of things that could or could not be included in to “core infrastructure”.

What is true is that the initiative doesn’t seem to be that well thought out, for example just to touch on one aspect that affects me: the OSMF, FB and Apple are competing with me for mobile editor users. Is there a scenario in which continued development still makes sense? And even JOSMs niche is becoming smaller and user number are stagnating or even going down.

Well the difference is that the osm-carto layer is just one of 4 (all OSM based), with a substantial number of other ones available and technically replacing it is a one minute change (just as with the routing engines, which we don’t operate ourselves either). AFAIK there is no alternative to the Nominatim service that is only using suitably licensed data (not to mention that there was a board decision way back to operate such a service ourselves). osm2pgsql sits a bit in the middle as it is something used by a great number of sites and is required for Nominatim.

Simply because there is no hope that they could be revived? I was actually on the brink of leaving all tile server/map related stuff away as, it is overall unclear how “core” they are.

I think it is a bit confusing to conflate this with the microgrants.

One of the rules communicated around the microgrants was that it wasn’t intended as a vehicle to finance core OSM infrastructure, and there is no doubt that iD, osm2pgsql and Nominatim belong in that category (actually this is about the only rule that was actually upheld in the microgrant project selection so we should be really grateful for that).

Once that is out of the way the question is simply if the OSMF wants to keep the software projects it heavily relies on heathy (the list is quite short in any case add the rails-port, mod-tile/renderd and I suppose osmium and that’s about it), not that there isn’t more software in OSM space that has high use, just that it wouldn’t fall in to the category of core infrastructure.

As to financing the conversion of P2, yes that should have been a no-brainer for a microgrant, and it is unclear why it wasn’t selected. Probably it simply fell through the cracks between playing HOT 2.0 and trying to make everybody happy. I would see financing this more as correcting an obvious mistake than anything to do with the more strategic questions of financing core infrastructure.

@CjMalone while some parameters of the micro grant scheme may have changed with the new board, I think it is still safe to say that it was never intended to be vehicle, or as a replacement, for regular employment by the OSMF. If there is ever is a situation where we are looking for that kind of solution, where and for how much people are employed is going to be a difficult decision. For example I don’t see why we should be paying an order of magnitude more for development work in the US or western Europe, when we can have the same from -pick-your-favourite-low-wage-country-.

Matter of fact the bulk of the applications show that the micro grant scheme is likely the wrong scheme, at the wrong time, aimed at the wrong audience.

And it is not that I think that none of the proposals are worthy of being funded by the OSMF. For example the request by the Weekly OSM team makes total sense, but it is a reoccurring cost that should simply be part of the CWG budget (harhar). I could even live with one or two of the “save the world” proposals being funded (which -use- OSM, but are clearly out of scope for micro grants, which should -support- the OSM project), again out of the CWG budget as a marketing exercise, with the expectation that they will be miked for marketing to the max.

@ChMalone the short version of that is “”

@SunColbat why surprise? The complexity is determined by the subject matter, and further confounded by that we allow many things that are otherwise restricted by law. If anything the surprise should be that we get away with -less- text than comparable non-open offerings, i.e. Instagram.

Just to document how I got to the 16’000 for Instagram, the number includes

• the Instagram ToU
• the Instagram privacy policy
• the Instagram community policy
• the Instagram platform policy
• the Instagram music policy
• the Facebook terms of use (required by the Instagram privacy policy)

I didn’t include the cookie policy and 9 further Facebook policies that are more geared towards developers and special use.

@gileri nope, nominative use is permitted by law, just as the use of the Instagram trademark in the blog post. The trademark policy simply licenses further use that by law would not be allowed to the community (something Instagram does not need to do).

@gileri so you agree that for example including the trademark policy in the count is very disingenuous?

PS: the serious comment is if you restrict the numbers to “what do I actually have to agree to” (for example the trademark policy is only of relevance if you want to licence use of the trademarks, and not something that you have to agree to, because that is already the law). They are 7’165 for OSM and something around 16’000 for Instagram (using the same criteria), that is not removing some duplication there is in the OSM texts, and not digging all to deep on the Instagram side,

Clearly you are biasing the numbers in OSMs favour.

You aren’t including the GDPR with a couple of 100’000 words, and I noticed that you skipped a few other things that are linked to in various documents. Not to mention other implicit underlying legislation that you will need to read too, so really we are talking about multiple millions of words that you will need to consume before you can start using OSM.

Well historically the WMF has offered bulk APIs for some “customers” :-), I would have to dig up the financials on that to see if they directly sold them or not. But my point would be more if you have a monopoly for something very in demand you don’t need to “sell” it in conventional sense, you can just threaten you will stop providing it if people don’t donate.

Simon

Hi Allan

Wrt the similarities and differences between Wikipedia and OSM, I do think it is important to note that it is not just a question of differences in distribution of the product. WP has also enjoyed a near monopoly for a large part of its history, a luxurious situation that OSM has never had.

There are essentially no replacement products and vendors for what WP does (because they were killed off nearly immediately), and lots, if not all, of WPs marketing (for donations) revolves around that they are not replaceable. So I would take a bit of an issue with the statement that they don’t monetize their content.

Very different with OSM, there are plenty of players at all kind of levels, from local to global, that are offering viable replacements and alternatives.

“out-sourcing” end-customer services and products, has out-sourced the financial investment and risk for the OpenStreetMap project too and allows us to operate without directly competing with all the other players.

Simon

The OSMFToU specifically disallow that, if you have concrete evidence of this happening, please contact us at privacy@osmfoundation.org

None of what you write above is actually born out in the text of the diversity statement, which makes the statement on behalf of everybody in the OSM community. Neither is it scoped to just apply to activities in OSM nor does it say anything along the lines of “your contributions are welcome even if you don’t share these values”. In any case you essentially make Christophs and Frederiks point that the relevant behavioral norm is actually that you are willing to contribute to our data regardless of your and any other contributors convictions, skin colour, gender and so on.

@mikelmaron as Frederik has already pointed out the issue is that the statement extends not just to the OSMF but to the wider OSM community. It adds further values you need to adhere to outside of wanting to contribute to a free and open map of the world.

To make things simple, consider countries (not even cultures) for which discrimination is a matter of law, say for example Saudi Arabia (same example the last time this was discussed), are government officials, “the government” in general, allowed to contribute to OSM in the new regime?