Apparently @AngocA has tried to start a debate and has gotten himself a very different debate. Perhaps it is time to pause for a while and reflect on where the misunderstandings lie?
You don’t need to. You can also re-create an active community around OSM carto. BUT then you need to convince the “owner” of OSM carto to get required permissions and so on, which might be harder than just fork it. But both is possible.
OSM carto is not “owned” by OSM or OSMF. Same as most of the other stuff on the website. No OSMF board or working group can grant you access or define you as new maintainer of e.g., OSM carto.
what if we had a “auto merge everything” map style? The OSM DB accepts all data contributions without review & acceptance, what about a map style for that? That would be … an interesting experiment.
As @woodpeck pointed out we’ve already had that (and it was awful from a cartographic pov).
It is good that the question comes up again. It is only every few years so not too often currently.
The Strategic Plan.
It is in place and kept up to date since some years.
About control:
Please lean back and define “OpenStreetMap” and “control” before you try to answer.
For me, OpenStreetMap are all the people that bring their local knowledge to the OpenStreetMap database plus those people supporting people in doing that. They are all volunteers, and we call it the community. It’s people, and volunteer.
The word “control” means that one
- can measure one or more observable variables
- set targets for the variables
- can interact with the object such that the measurement arrives at the target values
Now, by the very definition a volunteer cannot be controlled. They are then no longer volunteers.
In that sense: OpenStreetMap is not controlled and not controllable. It does not even need to be controlled and this is an important asset of OpenStreetMap.
The board and the working groups do have pages under the “Foundation Bodies” headline here:
Feel free to ask further detailed questions if necessary.
Osmarender was a “show everything” style; I wasn’t aware it was a “merge everything” one as well.
A while back someone on Discord did create a “merge everything” map style (it might have been a vector style for the OpenMapTiles schema), but the fact that I can’t find it now suggests that it did not set the world alight.
One big thing that I think OSM Carto gets wrong is that it tries to provide “mapper feedback” and “look nice”. I don’t believe that it is possible to do both of those well at the same time.
Creating a “show everything” style would be of benefit to the people who don’t have the technical capabilities, time, or inclination to create their own. Various people have done various things (showing “everything in a vector tile set” is not quite the same, but is trivial to do). A raster style that showed (at zoom 24, say) pretty much everything would require more work, but the opportunity is there for anyone keen**
** personally I’m just happy to continue showing “more useful information” on the existing styles I look after
Edit: Spelling, added links
Andy is referring to:
Since the discussion has taken this turn, for me, planet.osm.org is the true representation of OpenStreetMap.
The openstreetmap.org domain has been sacrificed to others to demonstrate the possibilities of using data collected by project participants and does not represent the project and its community properly, which leads to a misperception of the project itself by both project participants and outside observers.