OpenStreetMap has had a spike in tiles usage and, as I understand, the decision among those in charge was to limit tiles usage. Ilya Zverev has written a good summary on the decision in his blog: (use Google Translate) http://shtosm.ru/all/dlya-kogo-tayly/ His main point is that OSM is not liable to provide tiles to anyone but the mappers.

OSM owes you nothing, to put it shortly. And it’s not a commercial provider to do it for a reasonable rate. That’s perfectly true. Except that this case is another step to a death spiral and makes the project end come closer.

I saw exactly this happen in an amateur community network that I used. Its approach was exactly the same and it led to an eventual death of the project. OSM resembles it in many details, decisions and explanations. The community network also was very righteous in its statements.

Noncommercial provider

(I have to clarify the state of the internet providers, to make it clear. You may omit this paragraph.) In 1999, the internet providers in the city consisted almost entirely of (audio) dial-up, that is 56Kbit top speed. The phone network was state-owned, it tried hard to jump on the DSL wagon, but only upgraded its stations by 2004. Unlimited Ethernet or DSL appeared only in 2006-7.

So, in 1997, some 5 guys in a big condo near me, tired of modem speed, connected their computers with coaxial cables and Ethernet cards to make a local network. They were very enthusiastic and made all sorts of things: bought 56K modem and an unlimited plan, installed 24/7 servers, made an internal website with lots of information, and so on. In 2000, they organized consumer cooperative and finally bought in bulk a 1Mbit Ethernet line. By 2001 there were about a 100 users, and I was in 110s when I joined it in October or November.

The service was just fantastic compared to what was available: $4..5 per month, $0.06 per megabyte of data. Overall, I paid around $20..25 per month. With nobody wanting to pay a lot, the 1 Megabit connection to the outer world was always available. Inside the network, everything was free, we had 10..100 Megabits connections and shared lots of files.

There was another similar network in neighbor area, which eventually occupied the same area as ours, and in 2003 that network became a commercial provider.

That was the tipping point. From that moment that commercial network tried harder and harder to implement all the newest things, and our non commercial network invested in cables and hardware but had no means to improve the services and organization. In 2007 I finally left it because the commercial guys offered unlimited data plans, payment via bank card or payment terminals in shops, guaranteed support, etc.

Meanwhile our noncommercial network, had same old tools from 2002. For instance, to buy data traffic, we had to print a bill, go pay it in a bank, then input the numbers in an old form in the internal website, which looked the same as in 1997. Then the admin would just add data bytes to your account in the gateway. To open the gateway (it was closed to prevent your money drain), there was another web form, and no tools to simplify the workflow.

By 2007 when I left, the network had more than a 1000 users, but in mid-2000s many already started switching to commercial providers.

Looking back, in 2001, the noncom network offered the best service in the city. By 2007, step by step, the commercialized networks upgraded their services, meanwhile every time the consumer cooperative made righteous explanations and did next to no improvements.

That’s no secret: in every commercial company someone is motivated to shut up and work better and harder. He either earns big money on this, or at least guarantees the company survival. In noncommercial organization, everybody wins a little bit, but nobody is incentivised this much to make big enough an effort.

Back to OSM

What are the reasons for users to switch to OSM now?

1. free data for GIS work (but in the richer countries, data quality is high enough that, if tomorrow OSM dies, we’ll be fine with old planet files)
2. easy map to add to a website or an app? no
3. routing? no
4. addresses or geocoding? no, addresses seem to be scarse and incomplete with exception to countries like the Netherlands
5. tiles?

A tile layer is too big a commodity to be offered for free, but the point is that the less gateways to OSM exist, the less reasons are for it to exist at all.

In 2006 our noncommercial network rejected the idea of unlimited plans as economically unsound. In reality, unlimited plans are very economically sound. The management insisted that free data traffic would be abused. Same way, OSM insists it’s unsound to offer tiles for free.

I’m no expert to give advices. Limiting the tile usage might be necessary right now. My point is that this is another step in a way from the users and the world, which leads to project not needed by anyone. Ask yourself, why WILL one use OSM? (will, not should)