[Legal-general] Introduction

[80n]

Eric

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 11:39 PM, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
>
>> thus begins the fun discussion that we should change to PD because USGS
>> wants us to, or we should keep BYSA because nearmap wants us to
>>
>
What Steve is probably trying to say is that the license position within OSM
is very contentious and unlikely to change quickly nor in a perdictable
manner.

Perhaps you should consider ways of encouraging people to contribute their
work in a way that benefits both USGS and OSM.  This would give you traction
with the US based OSM community.

One approach would be to have contributions made directly to USGS with a
stated aim that it is made easy to push such contributions upstream to the
OSM database.

To achieve this you'd need to address three things effectively:
1) A solution that enabled contributions to be easily pushed upstream to OSM
2) A committment by USGS to invest in and maintain the it's dataset over a
reasonably long term
3) A committment by USGS to nurture and support the OSM community in the US

Pushing data to OSM is a very strong attractor that would make it much
easier to build your own community and would certainly interest a good
percentage of the existing US based OSM community.

80n


On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 11:39 PM, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:

> thus begins the fun discussion that we should change to PD because USGS
> wants us to, or we should keep BYSA because nearmap wants us to
>
>
>
> On Jul 19, 2010, at 8:27 PM, Eric Wolf wrote:
> > I wanted to make a quick introduction. Some of you may know me already -
> but likely many of you don't know why I subscribed to the list.
> >
> > First, I subscribed because the OSM/PD page on the OSM Wiki said this was
> the mailing list to discuss PD map issues.
> >
> > Second, I am involved in efforts within the USGS to understand how to
> work with the OSM community. I've done this in the past through things like
> joining mapping parties and taking Steve Coast on a tour of Washington DC.
> >
> > Third, the primary hurdle between the USGS and OSM interchanging data on
> a large scale is due to licensing. The USGS is required by federal law to
> release all data free of any restrictions. Technically, it's not PD but it's
> a flavor of PD. I'm not a lawyer, so I won't even try to get into it.
> Essentially, the USGS would be putting some significant effort directly into
> the development of OSM if it weren't for the license issue.
> >
> > Fourth, I'm involved in a project where we are testing some of the
> software capabilities and social processes within the context of current
> USGS data compilation. We've already stood up an empty OSM software stack on
> our own server and have begun populating with some test data. It's a very
> controlled test and there is very, very little actual data.
> >
> > So, I am interested in the OSM/PD project and I look forward to the
> discussions here.
> >
> > -Eric Wolf
> >
> > -=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=-
> > Eric B. Wolf                    New! 720-334-7734
> > USGS Geographer
> > Center of Excellence in GIScience
> > PhD Student
> > CU-Boulder - Geography
> >
> > GPG Public Key: http://www.h4h.net/ebwolf.public.key.txt
> > _______________________________________________
> > Legal-general mailing list
> > Legal-general at openstreetmap.org
> > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-general
>
> Steve
>
> stevecoast.com
>
>
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