Slashdot Mirror
The Future of Free and Open-Source Maps (emacsen.net)
Grady Martin writes: Former OpenStreetMap contributor and Google Summer of Code mentor Serge Wroclawski has outlined why OpenStreetMap is in serious trouble, citing unclear usage policies, poor geocoding (address-to-coordinate conversion), and a lack of a review model as reasons for the project's decline in quality. Perhaps more interesting, however, are the problems purported to stem from OpenStreetMap's power structure. Wroclawski writes: "In the case of OpenStreetMap, there is a formal entity which owns the data, called the OpenStreetMap Foundation. But at the same time, the ultimate choices for the website, the geographic database and the infrastructure are not under the direct control of the Foundation, but instead rest largely on one individual, who (while personally friendly) ranges from skeptical to openly hostile to change."
Can you please stop it with the Content Mafia bullshit?
I remember when everyone on this site atill understood why infornation cannot be owned and why "intellectual property" is a crime scheme to get money without working for it.
And now this ridiculous bullshit has been repeated until the kids trul believed it. Lieke North Koreans actially believing that Apophis ... err, I mean Kim Yong Whatever ... *is* God.
Also rhe problem with quality and power stems from the same problem that plagues Wikipedia and any website with "moderation": Centralization, the invalid assumption that there can only be one absolute right, and human pieces of ahi