this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Technology
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Well I can kinda see where they are coming from. How do you know it’s gonna stick around if it can’t make money? It isn’t even about making a profit either, but covering costs.
There are costs associated with hosting all this stuff. Right now donations are how instances keep the lights on (most of the time).
What happens when there is more and more users joining?
It works for Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap, to cite two popular examples.
OpenStreetMap is pretty shitty because of their need to make money; specifically it has basically no good apps, no free, limit-less tile servers, and it has actively hindered development on these fronts precisely because they want to make money.
OpenStreetMap ist a database for open GIS data, not a map service. The map service is just an accidental by-product.
Right, but trying to overly monetize the map service(s) actively hurts the GIS database as well - it means there's less adoption, less eyes on it, less contributors, and worse dataset.
And that's not to say that nobody should make money by providing map services - it can be healthy, too - but being docks about it doesn't help anyone.