OpenStreetMap and Fedora 10

I've been hosting mapping parties in cities around the US and meeting mappers from Denver to Detroit, Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and Tampa to Toronto.[1] Traveling the country has allowed me to meet many wonderful mappers and OSM contributors at mapping parties and has allowed me to share my enthusiasm for OpenStreetMap with new mappers through speaking engagements at Linux User Groups. The US OSM community is really starting to take off and I'm pleased to be helping with that.

Several of the folks that I've met recently are involved with the Fedora project. The Fedora 10 release party in Toronto was last week and was very well attended. I ran Redhat / Fedora from Redhat 7.2 to Fedora Core 3 so it has been a while since I looked in on the Fedora project. I was really impressed. Give Fedora a look if you haven't seen it recently.

Another recent event is related to Fedora. I met Fedora ambassador Yaakov at Ontario Linux Fest and then again at the Toronto and Pittsburgh mapping parties. He's a busy guy but found the inspiration and time to build an OpenStreetMap-oriented spin of Fedora. Now this is really great. At recent mapping parties some folks have had a tough time installing some of the OSM tools and some venues have had a problem with low bandwidth. I'm delighted by the idea of having a handful of bootable, persistent USB keys that folks can use at mapping parties without having to install anything on their laptops. Awesome work, Yaakov. Thank you! And does it ever boot fast!

The OSM spin is not yet complete so no link yet here. If you are familiar with packaging for Fedora and want to contribute to the OSM spin for Fedora contact me. Yaakov needs a couple of other sets of hands to pitch in on this project so that it can be properly maintained and become an official Fedora spin.

[1] Okay. Toronto is not in the United States of America. I know that. Three things put Toronto on this list. I've hosted mapping parties there, the alliteration was too delightful and a taxi driver in Pittsburgh said Canada is the fifty-first state. The cabbie was packing heat, so I wasn't interested in correcting him.