Allowing downloading of Maps

Hi,

So for GNOME Maps we want to allow an offline mode. But we do not want to encourage bulk downloading from the OSM servers. What are our options?
Is hosting tiles ourself the only way? And if so does anyone have information about the spec needed for the servers doing the hosting?

regards
Jonas

That topic has been asked (and answered good, I hope) on http://help.openstreetmap.org

do a search there for “own tile server” or “tile usage policy” … or see https://switch2osm.org

Furthermore when you are an active gnome developer,
you can also ask on the OSM talk mailinglist or OSM developer mailinglist,

see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mailing_lists

have you considered rendering vector data on client device?