Lacking faith
I really need to start believing the the power of free communities. I remember hearing about Wikipedia shortly after it started (the English version was at the few thousand articles mark) and thinking that it was a nice idea but would never really take off and compete with traditional encyclopaedias. Yeah, so I was wrong on that one, but at the time I knew nothing of the things (KDE for example) that communities of volunteers can build.
But a few years later, when I first heard about OpenStreetMap, I really shouldn’t have fallen in to the same trap again. But I did, I never thought it would become comprehensive enough to be usable. Now it’s my site of choice when I want a map, not only because the other alternatives either cool, but non-free, belong to the competition or are just plain horrible to use but because in many cases the OSM map data is actually superior (with better marking of local footpaths etc) and – of course – you know you can use it freely.
A really nice illustration of the coolness of OSM, showing edits from 2008, can be found at Vimeo or possibly viewed below if you’re viewing this somewhere that allows embedding. Either will unfortunately require you to have some kind of Flashy stuff installed.
OSM 2008: A Year of Edits from ItoWorld on Vimeo.
(This animation was produced by ITO World. It is licensed CC-BY-SA. The music is ‘Open Electro’ by Vincent Girès and is also CC-BY-SA).
