Terms of (non)service

The previous week I ran into an unexpected problem: It turns out that the Google Maps API Terms of Service may prevent me from using the API in my summer of code project. This despite of the fact that I only use the map controls, and not the map data. The problematic clause is the following:

The API may be used only for services that are generally accessible to consumers without charge. Accordingly, You may not use the API for any service that requires a subscription or other restricted access, or for which a fee is charged.

An OpenMRS deployer must necessarily restrict access to the patient data.

Fortunately, I can see light at the end of the tunnel. (Though it might be from an oncoming train) I have been spending some time looking into alternatives in case I have to drop Google Maps completely. OpenLayers, for example, looks promising. It doesn't seem as polished as Google Maps, but it should work.

Because of all this I have put the image viewer itself on hold, and have instead focused on the back-end parts of the project. I've been looking at bmckown's complex obs system, and am now running the complex obs build of OpenMRS locally. I've written a simple module that tries to interact with the complex obs system, and I've almost completed a preliminary implementation of an image tile carver, (resizing images and carving them into 256x256 pixel squares upon request) implemented as a ComplexObsHandler.