[Legal-general] Introduction

[Eric Wolf]

Let me start with a disclaimer: I do not speak officially for the USGS or
the US Government. Anything I say is my own opinion and should not be
construed otherwise.

And most definitely, it is not the intent of the USGS to have OSM change
their license. As a researcher who has been spending the past two years
trying to figure out how to better integrate volunteered geographic
information into The National Map, I wanted to make the OSM community aware
of one potential benefit of adopting a PD license. And if you think it's
hard to get OSM to change it's license, try getting the US Government to
shift...

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.
>

This is where we are currently stuck. Removing the license would make that
"both" even greater. Right now, the efforts made by the USGS for data
interchange with OSM benefit OSM but is of only limited benefit to the USGS.


> 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.
>

This is how it works now. Because of the license, OSM is able to "pull" data
from the USGS at will. There is no incentive to "push" data upstream because
we cannot get anything back. Money (tax dollars) spent developing any "push"
would be very contentious - almost as bad as if the USGS were to spend money
pushing data to Google or TeleAtlas.

Because of the license-wall, the USGS cannot use any improved data back from
OSM. Data checks in, but it can't check out.

1) A solution that enabled contributions to be easily pushed upstream to OSM
>

Because of budget issues, without being able to get data back, this is not a
priority. Easier data interchange between OSM and USGS is being explored
from a couple different angles. But, right now, it's all experimental.


> 2) A committment by USGS to invest in and maintain the it's dataset over a
> reasonably long term
>

Ummm.... The USGS has been maintaining a topographic basemap of the US for
125+ years. <sarcasm> The USGS used to have to use mules to map because
there weren't your fancy StreetView cars, airplanes and GPS satellites. Just
hard men and stinky stock animals. And even when this "whole internet fad"
goes away (sarcasm), the USGS will still be maintaining a topographic
basemap for the US.</sarcasm> I think it's safe to say the USGS is committed
to investing in and maintaining its dataset over the long term.



> 3) A committment by USGS to nurture and support the OSM community in the US
>

Even with the license limitations, the USGS is actively engaged with the
OSM-US community. There is more that can be done and resolving the license
issue would make more possible. But even with the license issue, there are
many people at the USGS who see significant benefit to working with and
fostering 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.
>

Our current test platform uses a copy of the OSM stack but populated with
our own test data. A big question we need to answer is whether people are
willing to edit data on our system rather than just doing it on OSM and what
happens when changes are made to the same data in both places.

Either way, the intent of my posting was to let the OSM community know that
there is a license issue. Seriously, the answer is to adopt compatible
licenses. I'm not sure what is harder to change: OSM or USA. But we have to
start discussing it.

-Eric Wolf
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