<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2009/12/17 Jean-Marc Liotier <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jm@liotier.org">jm@liotier.org</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
The quality of OpenStreetMap's work speaks for itself, but it seems that<br>
we need to speak about it too - especially now that Google is attempting<br>
to to appear as holding the moral high ground by using terms such as<br>
"citizen cartographer" that they rob of its meaning by conveniently<br>
forgetting to mention the license under which the contributed data is<br>
held. But in the eye of the public, the $50000 UNICEF donation to the<br>
home country of the winner of the Map Maker Global Challenge lets them<br>
appear as charitable citizens. We need to explain why it is a fraud, so<br>
that motivated aspiring cartographers are not tempted to give away their<br>
souls for free. I could understand that they sell it, but giving it to<br>
Google for free is a bit too much - we must tell them. I'm pretty sure<br>
that good geographic data available to anyone for free will do more for<br>
the least developed communities than a 50k USD grant.<br>
<br>
I answered this piece at ReadWriteWeb and I suggest that you keep an eye<br>
for opportunities to answer this sort of propaganda against libre mapping :<br>
<a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_announces_map_contest_50k_for_adding_school.php#comment-175013" target="_blank">http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_announces_map_contest_50k_for_adding_school.php#comment-175013</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br>You can add this link in terms of moral high ground:<br><br><a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/climate-tools-for-copenhagen-and-beyond.html">http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/climate-tools-for-copenhagen-and-beyond.html</a><br>