On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:06 AM, Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
2012/5/29 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
I'm not doubting that someone can take OSM data and make it into something usable. I'm not even doubting that someone *has* taken OSM data and made it into something usable.
You obviously have already made up you mind, so I doubt anything I'll say will change that, but...
It's not so much what you say. Possibly you, or someone else, can point me to a free OSM-based android app which I can use in my daily driving. If so, I will change my opinion.
If you're going to refer me to commercial products which were based (in part) on OSM data, then that's not what I was talking about.
And if you're going to point to the places where OSM beats the commercial products, that was already acknowledged in the very tomtom article we're talking about:
"Open source mapping certainly has its benefits and can be extremely useful, particularly for pedestrians and in city or town centres. The way that the maps incorporate input from a wide community of contributors can result in impressive international coverage, whilst also driving down costs of production. However, when it comes to automotive-grade mapping, open source has some quite serious limitations, falling short on the levels of accuracy and reliability required for safe navigation."
...if you wanna go this way, I wonder if you "go to en.wikipedia.org and just use it" if you want to plant tomatoes in your garden. I know I wouldn't.
I wouldn't use Britannica either. The context of the article is GPS navigation for automobiles.
One thing I do have to admit is that my experience with OSM has mostly been in the United States, which I hear is a place that OSM has been especially poor, and a place where Google (which is what I do use) is especially good.
And I don't foresee OSM ever being able to catch up. Google is very much a moving target. While OSM is working on catching up on geolocation (address to lat/lon) information, Google is micromapping to the level of detail needed to program a self-driving auto.