[Geodata] Geodata Mission

[Richard Fairhurst]

Martin Spott wrote:

> ....  and the article also shows, how 'control' of the OSM communities
> sentiments works by spreading half-true statements, by pretending
> something that none of the addressed audience will be able to verify,
> or simply be leaving out relevant facts. This is partially being
> combined with the general attitude of dividing people into the ones
> being "constructive" and others being "destructive" (guess who falls
> into which category  :-)
>
> This is an excellent sample for Steve's idea of "community management"
> and to my personal opinion it is not a level of social interaction that
> 'we' (OSgeo) should deal with.

Even if you disagree entirely with the article, you are going exactly  
the wrong way about countering it by imputing motives that aren't  
there. Saying "OpenStreetMap is misrepresenting GIS" is not best done  
by misrepresenting OSM.

OSM is essentially an open-source hacker community, albeit the  
"hackers" are sourced more widely (just as they are in Wikipedia). As  
such it has two overriding principles: "the simplest thing is good",  
and "just fricking do it". These principles may not be suitable for  
all environments but they continue to serve us well.

Your earlier comment about reinventing the wheel is way offbeam, too.  
Where relevant tools exist (Mapnik, Rails, OpenLayers) they are used  
fully in OSM. The mistake is to think that "GIS" per se has a monopoly  
on all computerised representations of geography and must  
automatically be the best solution. As a cartographer I can tell you  
that attitude has been annoying us for years. :)

Richard