Opensnowmap.org is around for a few years now. The map tiles are viewed by tens of thousand of visitors each month.
Although not bleeding edge technology, I think it’s a good thing to have it around in the Openstreetmap ecosystem, along with others like Thunderforest outdoors, openskimap.org, waymarkedtrails.org and others.
The server has cost of around 1300Euros per year. The budget balance depends from donations for one part, the rest coming from my pocket.
Details on this page shows outstanding donation in 2016, 2017 (sharing work done on the map contours and hillshading were granted by generous gift from mapping companies) and 2019 (sharing the complete map with a heavy user behind a cache). Yet, throughout the years, only a very small amount is also collected from individuals.
I want to help !
For this 2020/2021 winter season, I decided to explicitly ask here for recurring donations in order to sustain the website without relying on an occasional windfall, and also to give you the occasion to show your support.
You can do this with paypal via the donation page or contact me via email found there to do a wire transfer.
You won’t avoid Paypal or your bank fees, nor have a tax refund: we are talking about ski here, OpenSnowMap certainly don’t claims to be an NGO or charity organization of some kind.
What you get ?
Now what do you get that is not already available? First, all my love, the satisfaction to show your support to a map you like, and assist its goal to propose a nice rendering of ski pistes in order to attract new contributors completing the map. But with a new year starting, here are a few resolutions I consider:
- Discuss with the OSMF the trademark licence for “opensnowmap” name and domain (long overdue)
- Add a few README and CONTRIBUTING to the github repositories to help people willing to help.
- If the recurring donation allows it, add a fallback mirror 4TB SSD for the database.
- And of course voluntarily maintain the service for the years to come.
A word on resources sharing
OpenSnowMap server is rented at Hetzner for 113.88 euros per month.
It serves the map can be seen at www.opensnowmap.org, of course, but also on a few other websites.
The piste-only tile overlay is open to all websites and Apps. On the contrary the topo ‘base snow map’ use is restricted to ensure a good quality of service. Its use is granted to a few websites dedicated to winter sports and run by enthusiasts. The only heavy user is www.snow-forecast.com, they manage a good exposition to our map while heavily caching the tiles themselves, and supported the server upgrade in 2019.
Discussion is always open to grant access if your project can helps ski mapping in OpenStreetMap awareness from potential contributors and/or technical or financial help to support load beyond 50’000 tiles per day.
Sincerely yours, Yves
A great thank you to all who gave a little money during this winter ! This helps keeping this service afloat.
From november, 11 individuals donated, covering a third of the server cost.