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Top-level
Simon Poole
Getting employed to "do what just happens to cross my mind" is quite rare, typically you need to have a Noble prize or similar associated with your career to get that kind of position. Just because there is some marginal usefulness of what you just thought up for society, doesn't mean that society is obliged to pay you for it. If your product has actual value, then there is always the time honoured avenue of selling it, just like every baker, farmer, artist etc. has to do . 22 comments
Ilya Zverev
@simon ...and that's the problem with most open-source: they target other developers, just like I target other mappers, and that's not a very visible or paying audience. You do pip install, not buy a library. You download every door, not pay for a privilege of improving OSM. When OSMF sees something the general public can benefit from, they pay. E.g. Jochen's work on the data model. I suggested different API and data model improvements that benefit _mappers_ in 2019, but that's long forgotten.
Ilya Zverev
@simon And if you think that's a popularity or visibility problem, ask Tobias how much he earns from StreetComplete. Which is a product seven times more popular than ED and is the second most popular editor, between iD and JOSM. I'm willing as much to advocate for him to get on a payroll for his work as for myself. He absolutely deserves it.
Simon Poole
@zverik maps.me/OM is just as popular. But that is not the point, the question is if spending the money on something provides a reasonable return/value for the money spent. And if you look it that way, spending money on anything except iD maintenance is literally pointless. And given that there is a fixed pot of money, spending it on anything outside of what gives the best bang for the buck, actively damages the project.
Ilya Zverev
@simon regarding the "fixed pot", that's an attitude I cannot support. If we're talking about OSMF, it's far from fixed, though OSMF makes it look so. In development in general, "a return for money spent" is not how you get new things. Like, no company besides Cloudmade and MapZen innovated in OSM on their own money. Because R&D doesn't bring money. Is spending on it pointless? Well, if your goal is to make more money, then yes. Is the goal of OSMF to earn money?
Simon Poole
@zverik the goal is to get more people mapping. So lets do the numbers, for simplicities sake lets assume the OSMF can spend $1/year on development per new mapper, so $152k for 2023 (this is substantially more than what the OSMF actually spends) and split that up
Simon Poole
@zverik so now you will likely argue that a new maps.me/OM mapper is not worth the same as a new everydoor mapper because the retention/conversion rate is much lower. So lets factor that in
Simon Poole
@zverik and wrt the argument that you don't get new stuff without spending money. Literally all editors in that list were initially developed by private initiative, and those private individuals,/organisations/corporations carried the risk that nothing would come of it (and the list of the projects with that outcome is long). Why would the OSMF subsume your risk over that of others?
Ilya Zverev
@simon Why me and not others? Good point — I don't know! In this R&D thread I'd argue that SC and ED are the only two editors actively innovating OSM editing today. We see the outcome: two products that slowly crawl to replace iD and JOSM as primary editors for beginner and dedicated mappers. OSM got those for free. But just as with Merkaartor, OWL, 360°, and - almost - iD, it can lose it for free as well. Good thing all nine editors in your lists are made by people from first-world countries!
Simon Poole replied to Ilya
@zverik "2 two products that slowly crawl to replace iD and JOSM as primary editors for beginner and dedicated mappers." the numbers clearly do not support that conjecture.
Simon Poole replied to Ilya
@zverik 5 x 0 = 0 Less snarky: there is hardly any replacement of conventional editing now, so why should that be different in 5 years, more supplemental use, yes I can see that (that is assuming current product profiles, obviously a name is just a name, so can be used for something completely different).
Ilya Zverev
@simon Haha no, I'd argue the opposite: drive-by mappers probably make edits that are out of reach to mappers who stay. I made this point at SotM in 2015 and stand by it today. OM is important to us because it reaches audiences SC/iD cannot ever. 
Rihards Olups
@simon @zverik But OSMF potentially could explore more active stance (taking care of becoming dependent of sponsors). Oh, BTW, perhaps the great OSM community developers can be polite one to another - even negative views can be expressed in ways that don't leave the other person much worse off ;)
Simon Poole
@richlv @zverik the thing is, funds are in reality not unlimited, so there has to be choices. Sure the OSMF could move to a centralized development model, but if wikipedia is anything to go by then we would then just have one and a half editors. As is we have a competitive market place in which everything goes. That has the advantage that there is more choice and the disadvantage that the majority of devs are working on their own dime (or whatever they are able to scavenge from 3rd parties).
Rihards Olups
@simon @zverik And I say this still being sad that OWL disappeared, had wished to see it on osm.org. Perhaps OSMF could act more as a facilitator, helping to connect developers with potential grant sources, having some templates for applications and the process?
Simon Poole replied to Rihards
@richlv @zverik OWL never really worked, and the last dev that worked on it tried to use it as leverage to get employed by the OSMF ... which as we know, failed. A full blown replacement for it is probably out of the financial reach of the OSMF and it isn't even clear if that approach still makes any sense.
Ilya Zverev replied to Simon
@simon @richlv Regarding OWL, yeah, I made WhoDidIt which basically replaced it, and then Wille made OSMCha that got supported by Mapbox and basically fully covers the standard low-level changes monitoring. I wouldn't say they used it as a leverage... Or I don't remember it all too well. It definitely was too early for that.
Ilya Zverev
@simon @richlv Currently I see the choice is between all or nothing: if we can't fund everything, we'll allow developers go at their own pace with their own money. I heard this Wikimedia thing repeated so often, I started doubting that it's either-or proposition. And pretty sure OSM is far from a competitive market. If we count every single attempt at making an editor, we will hardly get to a hundred. There are 27 editors with 30+ users _in_a_year_, OSMF could start supporting them all easily.
Ilya Zverev replied to Ilya
Simon Poole replied to Ilya
Ilya Zverev replied to Simon
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Gregory's Server
@simon Sure, I understand that. This is a product talk. If you have a product, sell it.
What I do, is not products. It's R&D. Taking two or more things, mushing them together and seeing if it blows up or cures white spots on the map.
From some things I do, products grow. Like Every Door and other editors, Easy Transit, Nik4. Or other people take my R&D and form it into products they sell, like RocketData and InkAtlas did.
Cashable "value" comes from general public. My audience is mappers.