Dear OSM Sysadmins please read:
OSM maps, IMHO, are the most important part of MOBAC, since OSM provides the most detailed maps of country areas with no cell phone signal where you depend on using offline maps.
At the same time, my greatest motivation also providing information and creating new tracks in OSM was the possibility using it offline for hiking.
I think your decision to stop providing this offline use with stopping MOBAC downloading OSM maps will many people make stop using OSM at all.
Further, this people will stop providing information to the OSM Project.
Also I of course understand that you want to stop people which are mass downloading gigabytes of data from your servers. Nobody needs to download completely detailed maps (level 16 and higher) of a whole country. But what we need for hiking, running, cycling, is download small area maps quite detailed. I downloaded some maps I used for running and cycling areas and those maps NEVER exceeded 40mb.
My proposals for a possible solution:
1) Map tile downloading programs like MOBAC should have an option to log into OSM with the OSM username and password. And only people who donated to OSM are allowed to (mass) download. Or implanting a payment scheme in OSM for example the right to download 100mb costs 4$, 1G for 20$ and so on. I'm sure people who really want to use or depend on your maps are willing to pay a few bucks.
2) if you still want to provide free data: limit the download volume per IP for example at 100mb per user IP, maybe in combination with the option for the need to log in to OSM before downloading.
You must see, MOBAC depends on OSM maps and the OSM Project depends on programs like OSM. People will stop using OSM if you restrict it. If I didn't use offline OMS maps until today, I would had downloaded ten times as much data for everytime downloading the same few tiles again. Please find a solution soon, Sincerely, DS
OpenStreetMap
