[Wikimedia-l] The failure of Google, looking for open source alternatives

[Tomasz Ganicz]

Bear in mind that OSM is a community such as we are, with its own
habits and ideas. The idea of OSM is to have everything in one databse
which structure is very open. You can actually put there almost
everything which can be connected with the points, lines or areas and
exist on our mother Earth. See:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features

You can also propose a new features to be added to the official OSM
database schema. It is disussed by OSM community in similar way as a
new ideas in Wikipedia.

 OSM has actually its own API which is free to use:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6

It can be used both for creating new tools for editing of OSM as we as
creating new functionalities based on OSM data.



2013/8/25 Peter Gervai <grinapo at gmail.com>:
> Hello,
>
> Apart from the politics side and the end-of-the-world aspects there
> are good points raised.
>
> Right now there are some services based on the google map, mainly the
> map itself, panoramio which puts images on map, routing engine
> calculates directions, and several other layers exists on the map.
>
> There is open content map: OSM. Image collections with geoinformation
> exists, like Commons. Routing exists like YOURS, or graphhopper.
> Geocoded wikipedia articles exist, and possibly several open geocoded
> contents as well.
>
> There is a point to bring these together and WMF have the resources
> (both monetary and hardware-wise) to make it done. All the open-source
> tools exist, WMF have the resources to host a tile server (or better
> yet a vector tile server), we already host Commons, so it's well
> possible to provide such a community-based resource.
>
> Possibly the largest task would be to make an exceptionally good and
> future-proof plan of all of these. Google made it wise, they are
> pretty modular so they can insert new services easily. We can do that,
> we are more numerous. ;-) With a good API it's possible to get
> together something like goog earth where people can use provided
> layers as well as insert new ones for themselves form the
> layer-collections.
>
> I personally would like to see geocoded commons images to appear on a
> map to be able to use it instead of panoramio (even if I see the vast
> problems with commons and the assurance of free and useful images;
> it's hard to say how useful is an image of a field, hill or some
> streets).
>
> IMHO.
>
> --
>  byte-byte,
>     grin
>
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-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz