Free is too expensive (Economist)

And so on. I've been burned a couple of times by the OSM, so I won't use it for anything important (like getting from point A to point B in time).

So no, maps are definitely not something I'd trust to Wikipedia-style development. Now, maps based on official geodata with wiki-style corrections would be great. And we actually have it in Russia ("folks' map" by Yandex).

>I sometimes wonder why you post here - you don't really seem to believe in the idea of collaborative effort or free software at all.

I certainly do. Only an idiot would deny the success of the Linux kernel (btw, I hate the combination 'Linux kernel', sounds too much like 'ATM machine').

However, I'm not blind and I can see where the _non-commercial_ community development model fails. It usually fails in tasks that require a lot of drudgery and/or interaction with real users.

Linux kernel by now is not non-commercial, it's developed by for-profit companies as a way to avoid developing their own completely new OS. Besides, Linux is hardly boring at all.

OSM might actually be picked up by companies which need reliable mapping data but which don't want to pay to develop it from scratch and/or license it. That's arguably already happening (Apple is using OSM in one of their products).

But no company bets on Linux desktop right now. And unfortunately, a lot of desktop-related development is very boring stuff. Like keeping compat wrappers for old API or making sure you don't break anything with new updates. So we see the result - a lot of wonderful new development with no regards for backward compatibility and regressions in functionality.

A similar problem - there are no good tax/accounting packages for Linux. Just our favorite grumpy editor.