Yep. It's a work-in-progress; if you know the local paths, go in and add them to the map!
But it's worth noting that partial coverage of rural footpaths is a lot more than TomTom ever has.
Essentially OSM works on the principle of "with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". There are cases of vandalism in OSM, but they don't last very long; the community usually picks them up rapidly and reverts them.
We have one advantage over Wikipedia in that it's easier for us to determine what's right. On Wikipedia, if one contributor says "John Doe's contribution to scholarship was important" and another says "no it wasn't", you get an edit war. On OSM, if one mapper says "this road is called Market Street" and another says "this road is called Market Road", we just go and look at the street sign. The rule is "what's on the ground". (The one place where this breaks down is disputed territorial borders, such as Northern Cyprus and Kashmir, but there are procedures in place for that.)
Someone should show this video to these elderly folks
> you are doing an AWESOME job.
I don't speak for the project. I'm just a contributor, just like if I were a Wikipedia contributor.
> May be you could suggest the "free-as-in-beer users" of OSM to to add a sponsor link to their search engine.
I don't know what a sponsor link to a search engine is, but the license dictates usage, and everyone is in full compliance with the license.
> For instance, I find fairly difficult to edit maps in open street map, but if there was a good interface to allow the user to report back to OSM that an information is wrong with a descriptive text might help mappers that know how to edit the maps to correct them.
This question has multiple answers, so let me try my best to address them:
1) If you're interested in learning more about OSM, I highly recommend joining the newbies list. It's very low traffic and very high quality.
2) Personally, I think most mapping in OSM isn't that hard (sometimes it is but not usually). Maybe if you explained what you found hard, we could work on that?
3) The suggestion for textual feedback back to OSM is already in the works for the new website, which will hopefully be up later this year. I think that's the bridge between mappers and non-mapping contributors you're asking about.
> it just doesn't contain the terms that (apparently) the developer would like
No.... It's a term that the article of this slashdot blurb doesn't like. We in the project (including me, the person who is being paraphrased) have no issue with anyone making money off the project.
> without any acknowledgement or payment to the origin of the product is just immoral,
Acknowledgement is attribution, and attribution is part of the license. And the license is being followed.
As for payment... there is no obligation for that. Would it be nice? Sure. But it's not required.
> Who is making that accusation?
Probably the same guy whose voting my comment down clarifying things I was quoted on in the original article.
After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect. - Freeman Dyson