Beyond the Code
or, how to win friends, influence people and make a living by writing open source software. It's not just about the code.
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Thursday 10 September 2009, 1:32 PM
MapOSMatic - city maps from OpenStreetMap
A group of French developers and contributors to OpenStreetMap have created MapOSMatic which creates maps with grids and street indexes for a given area. It's a fantastic example of what can be done with free geodata and open source software.
At present MapOSMatic only covers France, but since the source code is available under the GNU Affero GPL, anyone can set up their own version loaded with a different set of data. A few companies now provide country-specific extracts of OSM data, so setting one up should be a matter of a few downloads.
The site has been created using many of the components that OSM itself uses, such as the Mapnik rendering engine, PostgreSQL database and some tools from OSM itself. What the authors of MapOSMatic have done is to combine these with some of their own code to produce a new service, without the need to negotiate licences, prices or sign agreements. If they had needed any of those things, the chances are MapOSMatic would never have happened.
At present MapOSMatic only covers France, but since the source code is available under the GNU Affero GPL, anyone can set up their own version loaded with a different set of data. A few companies now provide country-specific extracts of OSM data, so setting one up should be a matter of a few downloads.
The site has been created using many of the components that OSM itself uses, such as the Mapnik rendering engine, PostgreSQL database and some tools from OSM itself. What the authors of MapOSMatic have done is to combine these with some of their own code to produce a new service, without the need to negotiate licences, prices or sign agreements. If they had needed any of those things, the chances are MapOSMatic would never have happened.
PreviousComments on this post
Sorry, but Gilles did NOT participate at the development of MapOSMatic. MapOSMatic authors are (from http://maposmatic.org/about/):
* David Decotigny
* Frédéric Lehobey
* David Mentré
* Maxime Petazzoni
* Thomas Petazzoni
* Gaël Utard
Many apologies — I made the mistake of confusing coming up with the original idea with the actual hard work at the keyboard. Happy to set the record straight.
