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Let's Ch</title></head><body>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>In system management, success is reaching
the next bottle neck. My take away from Alex's concern is
"What is the next bottle neck for OSM to focus on?" We
can already see some of the great successes that MapBox has created
from the ideas used to make a slippy map. I am so thankful for
the whole idea of mbtiles. What a wonderful idea. I am so
thankful for TileMill. I show people TillMill and how they can
use it to get into GIS with a limited budget. These people can save a
ton of cash and learn the same important concepts behind GIS without
more expensive tools. However, I don't believe that the license
is the next bottleneck. The next bottleneck to face is something
more like creating the iD editor.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>I understand the Gift Culture. I've been to Burning Man a
dozen times. OK, more or less: it might be eleven, it
might be thirteen or fourteen. I have just barely lost count, so
it is somewhere between 11 and 14 (starting in 1995, when there were
only "hundreds" or "low thousands" there, not the
tens of thousands I've seen in past years). Yet still: the
Gift Culture is real.</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>I've just described the gift culture of
the open source/data world. My dentist doesn't get it. He thinks
that I should make as much money as I can. Why are you giving
this away? MapBox has gifted us some great things. Part of
my gift back is to use a project or tell other people about these
gifts. Corporations don't always get this idea. We can
look to the recent example of Oracle Corporation and the
Jenkins/Hudson controversy. In short, Oracle wanted to take
complete control of the open source Hudson project. The rift was
so bad that Jenkins was forked out of Hudson so that the project could
continue. In a perfect world, I'd say Alex, let's change
the license so that we can share things better with one another.
However, I can't. Others don't understand that gift
culture like you and I do. From all bad things that I've seen, I
wouldn't license the data under any other license than
ODbl.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>My experience with OSM for nearly five years has been largely my
".org side" of giving back as a volunteer. Sometimes
it potentially strays into the ".com realm," as I do run a
software consultancy that charges by the hour. I haven't yet
billed for hours yet for any OSM work, but I don't rule it out in the
future. The Gift Culture and volunteering blurs a bit with my
.org and .com worlds. I suspect there are others for whom this
is true as well.</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>ODbl isn't the only license that causes
legal heartburn.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>There is a liquid boundary right now going on. Part of it
is because of differences in Europe and USA, part of it is cultural,
as in "freedom" (of Information Act at a federal level,
Public Record Acts making for "green pastures" regarding
data openness), part of it is corporate as in "what the courts
have said and are likely TO say...".</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><redacted></div>
<div>Greg addresses heady issues which are not germane to my
responses, so I hereby duck out of this thread.</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Next problem with this ideal is that OSM
cannot guarantee the integrity of the data once it has been placed
into the OSM database. I started to map pedestrian crossings. I
am OK that a crossing is not rendered at this time because I use a
node for a crossing, a node for a traffic light, and another crossing
node to help line up intersections. I also thought that it would
be a great way to sell governments on the use of this kind-of data to
maintain their annual restriping of crosswalks. A new mapper
comes along and starts deleting the crossing data because
cartographers have not rendered the data. The data were/are
considered map clutter. I guess the reason is that if I cannot
see the data rendered, then why do I have to plow through it in an
editor?</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>I will say that iD allows very entry-level editors to make
significant contributions (witness the University of California Santa
Cruz students of CMPE 80A who enter mobility/handicapped data like
tactile_paving and crosswalks and bus_stop data). While the
editor might largely contribute to them "getting this wrong,"
it isn't hard (but it is a bit of work) to "clean up" these
data. So, it's a step in the right direction for early users to
use iD, especially if they make "sloppy" errors, but the
data they enter are important and valuable.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I agree with Greg's characterization that it is important to get
contributions (even if slightly "goofed") which can be
"cleaned up" or "harmonized" later. See,
"getting data in" is important, and "getting data in
right" is important. Both don't need to happen at the same
time (though it is good if they do), as "cleanup" can
happen. In fact, it is valuable as it does, even as a two-step
process.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>What Greg says about ugly tiles reminds me of osmaender (sp?)
from circa 2011. That was an ugly renderer in many cases, but
showed tagging at a "ragged" level. Maybe we can get
to something like that again.</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Vector tiles are not the solution if the
resulting tiles are the just more of the same minimalist map tiles.
We need a real mapper's map again. We need tiles that are
so butt ugly only a mother would hang the project tiles on her fridge
because that's what little Johnny did in school today. The type
of butt ugly tiles I am talking about are something like Tiles@Home, <a
href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tiles@Home"
>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tiles@Home</a>. The magic of
T@H was that I was rewarded as a young mapper. It was magic when
I saw the first traffic=hump that I added to the database show up on
the map. From there, it was an Easter egg hunt to find traffic
calming humps as I could while I fixed tiger data.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>Touché, Greg. That is a very useful toolchain.<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>A license change is not what OSM needs.
The Linux project held firm to their license even though
businesses complained. Corporations are contributing to the
project now. Even Microsoft has contributed to the kernel after
years of calling the GPL a cancer. OSM needs to hold firm to the
license that we have. As people have pointed out a permissive
license would allow companies to just sweep the OSM data into their
database without gifting back. I've spent a great deal of my
resources in the way of enjoyable time exploring and mapping my part
of the world. That has been my gift to the project and fellow
mappers. Businesses need to figure out how to join in and what
they can regift to the project. If they can't, then there are
always other paid alternatives to OSM data. They have to weight
the perceived cost of giving up data verses the cost of paying a
service provider like Google to keep their IP.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>Yup. Simply said: yup.</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>I hope this helps,</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>It does, Greg. Thank you.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>SteveA</div>
<div>California</div>
<div><br></div>
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