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Wikipedia? They have plenty funds to sustain their infra and core team to maintain it. What about all the (big) freeloaders who use OpenStreetMap Foundation's
by RicoElectrico 6y ago
Wikipedia? They have plenty funds to sustain their infra and core team to maintain it.
What about all the (big) freeloaders who use OpenStreetMap Foundation's map tile server infrastructure [1] instead of self-hosting as it was intended [2](or using a SaaS)?
All the corporate sponsors who fund OSMF [3] roll their own map stack, but outside of them still there occasionally appears a rogue app/website with high traffic. IIRC, most of the tile server traffic comes from outside of osm.org.
[1] https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/ https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/
[2] https://switch2osm.org/ https://switch2osm.org/
[3] Who still are controversial for their constant "bargaining" on how to put the copyright notice in the least visible way, even though it's required by ODbL license.
- google234123 6y agoThis money would be going to foundation, their ever increasing staff, and the different random projects that they support.
- krferriter 6y agoWhat's the problem? Other for-profit entities are getting material value from importing Wikipedia content at no cost. I'm not opposed to a for-profit vs nonprofit/personal distinction where for-profit clients that redistribute Wikipedia content have to pay a small license fee. If that results in Wikipedia paying their contributors something for accepted article contributions I'd be even more for it.
- RicoElectrico 6y agoWell yes, but sometimes I ponder whether the funds are well spent. I checked out their research projects (supported by data from analytics stack they maintain), yet many were non-conclusive or half-finished. Hope they don't go the route of Mozilla.
- londons_explore 6y agoOSM should just run their tile server behind cloudflare. Then cloudflare will pay for all the traffic for common map tiles, and load on the tile infrastructure will be low enough that the running cost isn't substantial. Asking thousands of individual users to set up and host their own tile servers is just a waste of everyone's time.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y agoOSM already runs its tileserver behind fastly.
- stereo 6y agoOSM Foundation treasurer here. Hi! We've recently started hosting our tiles on Fastly, thanks to their generous support. Our policies remain the same, and if you're going to use a big amount of tiles, you should go with one of the commercial tile services, or host your own.
- brnt 6y agoThanks for your and your orgs fantastic job!
- hnarn 6y agoEveryone running their own tile servers is in theory a good idea, but in practice (at least last time I looked) it’s a nightmare to set up. If they want to push people in that direction, they could learn something from “certbot” from LetsEncrypt for example: if you give people a good enough wrapper that makes it relatively easy to self host and contribute to the network, they will. If they don’t understand how, they’ll just use a tile server from somewhere else.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y agoThere's a Docker image. https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/using-a-docker-container/ https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/using-a-docker-containe...
- hnarn 6y agoHave you ever set it up? If so, how complicated was it to get it to work?
- Doctor_Fegg 6y agoI haven't, I'm afraid (I'm not greatly into Docker and vector tiles are more interesting these days anyway).
- iudqnolq 6y agoIf you're looking to set up osm2pgsql you might find my code useful. It's a wip hobby project by a student, so absolutely no promises about quality/correctness, but it shows basic usage. https://www.github.com/danielzfranklin/backpackingmap/tree/master/server%2Flib%2Fbackpackingmap%2Fosm%2Fsync%2Fsync.ex https://www.github.com/danielzfranklin/backpackingmap/tree/m...
- nerdponx 6y agoWikipedia? They have plenty funds to sustain their infra and core team to maintain it. And? Let them extract more value from big tech companies. The Wikimedia foundation provides services that I value. If big tech pays for those services and not me, all the better.