[OSM-legal-talk] The big license debate, correction

[Richard Fairhurst]

Frederik Ramm wrote:

> I know that most of you see large, blodless, ruthless commercial
> entities when talking about these things.
>
> What I see is a happy and active OSM contributor in a little town
> somewhere, maybe a student.

Apologies for posting a "me too", but I'd like to echo Frederik's  
message here 100%. I won't quote the lot, but it's at

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2007-March/000170.html

if anyone wants to reread it.

Navteq, TeleAtlas, Ordnance Survey or any of the big guys won't be  
interested in our data until we have full coverage of the world. The  
actual 0s and 1s of the data are really only part of what they sell.  
For the rest, what you're buying is Quality Assurance and contracts.  
That's how the geodata market works.

Because TeleAtlas is a commercial organisation with a line management  
structure, clever vans with cameras and satellite dishes, a big  
surveying budget, etc. etc., it can contractually promise 99.9%  
coverage of an area. That promise is what people like TomTom are  
buying. Even if OSM has 100% coverage, we can't promise it  
contractually.

(For the same reason, we're not a useful source for TeleAtlas to  
incorporate into their data. They can't assure it contractually unless  
either they've been on the ground to survey it themselves, or have  
sublicensed it from a company with which they have a contractual  
relationship.)

AFAIK TeleAtlas and Navteq have made no approaches to OSM whatsoever.  
The one guy at OS who took an interest has left, and saw us as  
complementary anyway, neither a source nor a rival. Like I say, I  
really don't think we have to worry until we have full coverage of the  
world - and at that point, what do we care anyway?

On the other hand, as one of the little guys that Frederik describes,  
I would love to be able to use OSM data in my little-guy, hand-drawn  
maps. I would hope that my contribution of 10,000 miles of GPS tracks,  
3,200 lines of Flash editor code, and mapping of several towns -  
though by no means stellar by OSM standards - shows that I'm not  
trying to "cash out". And the supportive, no-return-required  
contributions from fellow cartographers to other open map projects  
I've been involved in (npemaps, UK Illustrator file) shows that I'm  
not unique in this.

cheers
Richard