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<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm">
The story of the Ottawa bus stops started when the City decided to
announce the bus stops in an automated way to assist blind people.
To do this they went round every bus stop with very accurate GPS
equipment so the bus stops were measured to within a meter or so
accuracy. One or two weren’t in quite the right place, being
placed in the highway but on the whole they were much better than
they had been.</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm">Some GTFS files for
bus stop positions can be 200 meters out.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm">I bumped into the
head of the transit system and talked about the License on the data
and his comment was “but we want you to use the data.”
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-GB">So
now we had accurate bus stop data that we couldn’t use because of
licensing. Bus stop data in OpenStreetM</span>ap in Ottawa is
important because the transit route planning system at the time did
not use footpaths and would suggest a longer trip to a different bus
stop than the closet one.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm">The Canadian Treasury
Board was
promoting Open Data and the <span lang="en-US">President of the
Treasury Boar</span><span lang="en-US">d wanted to show how
progressive they were so had a meeting of a dozen or so people who
were thought to use Open Data. I was one of them and raised the
issue that we couldn’t use their data because of the license which
surprised a few civil servants who were there.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">It
took them five years to consult and eventually come up with </span><span
lang="en-US">version
2.0 of the Open Government Licence – Canada </span><span lang="en-US">which
is the current Open Data License.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">S</span><span
lang="en-US">tatistics
Canada sells a lot of data. Want to know where the best place to
open a new coffee shop is Stats Canada will sell you all sorts of
data to show you were the best places are. They were interested in
enriching their data about buildings. How many floors they had etc.
and had the idea that using OpenStreetMap volunteers would be an
inexpensive way to enrich their data. </span><span lang="en-US">Before
I retired I worked at Statistics Canada and the corporate culture is
very different to OpenStreetMap.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">We
had a meeting which included the City of Ottawa, a couple of people
from the local University, at least one person from HOT by phone and
someone from Metrolinx who had added some addresses from Statistics
Canada’s OpenData portal after examining their Open Data license
and the requirements of OSM. They were new houses and they wanted
them for their transit planner. </span><span lang="en-US">Statistics
Canada Open Data is released under the Federal government’s Open
Data license by the way.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">We
showed them Ottawa in OSMand in French with French street names,
politically French is important in Canada and can add expense to a
project if you need to translate etc. The decision in principle was
made to import City of Ottawa’s building data into OSM and then
enrich it.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">It
took two years to change the City’s Open Data license to be the
same as the Federal Government one. There are minor wording changes
such as City of Ottawa rather than the Crown but basically it’s the
same.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">During
that time I suggested to Statistics Canada someone attending </span><span
lang="en-US">SotM
</span><span lang="en-US">in Europe might be useful </span><span
lang="en-US">to
make a few contacts</span><span lang="en-US">. In the event the
person who was suppose to go was unable to attend was unable to
attend so his manager went instead.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">S</span><span
lang="en-US">o
everything was lined up ready for the import. Both the City of
Ottawa and Statistics Canada had put a lot of effort into the project
and many organisations were looking forward to using the data.
</span><span lang="en-US">Metrolinx had studied the licensing and
were happy we were OK.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">The
license was challenged on the import mailing list. Shall we simply
say the LWG was very nice and came up with a verdict that accepted
Version 2 of the Open Data license. We’ll pass over all the people
involved but simply say it took considerable effort and resources.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">These
days data from most Canadian municipalities released under their Open
Data license is not eligible for OSM but the same data released
through the Statistics Canada Open Data is eligible.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">The
bus stops, well once the Open Data licenses had been sorted out the
local mappers imported the data.</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm"><span lang="en-US">Any
change to the license requirements to import Open Data </span><span
lang="en-US">can
have an impact and that is a concern. It takes a long time to get
things changed to line up.</span>
<br>
</p>
<br>
Cheerio John<br>
<br>
<span>Dave F via talk wrote on 11/29/2022 10:38 AM:</span><br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:4883a0d1-06dd-ebc6-9065-aae3cbb136ec@btinternet.com">On
28/11/2022 23:48, Tobias Knerr wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">we would like to offer data donors a standard
legal text that they can
use to make their data available to OSM in such a way that we would
expect it to survive a hypothetical license change.
<br></blockquote>
<br>
I'm confused.
<br>
If a maintainer of a database wishes to change their licence, they're
certain to have justifiable reasons for doing so. If it means OSM can't
use it, so be it. OSM has no jurisdiction.
<br>
<br>
If it's a licence change by OSM then how can a maintainer of a database
possibly account for a future, unspecified change who's implementation
was out of their control?
<br>
<br>
Could you expand on what you mean by 'legal text'. Is it a legally
binding contract?
<br>
<br>
Cheers
<br>
DaveF
<br>
<br>
<br>
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<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
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