[Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:06 AM, Strainu <strainu10 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2012/5/29 Anthony <wikimail at 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.