[OSM-legal-talk] moving up the stack

[Richard Fairhurst]

Hm, I was thinking before checking my mail this morning -  
"legal-talk's gone quiet again". Maybe not. :)

Tom Chance and SteveC wrote pretty much the same things:

> [Tom:]
> OSM will undoubtedly make some business models less profitable or even
> redundant. But I don't foresee us having any trouble gathering the data, and
> there are/will be plenty of ways to finance further use whether it's
> producing walking guides or route planning web sites. Cheap and unfettered
> access will also help social/financial entrepreneurs innovate in unexpected
> ways - I have lots of ideas up my sleeve if only I had the time!

> [Steve, replying to Frederik:]
> Your hypothetical student is a poor entrepreneur. He would never have
> started Red Hat.

And I can see where you're both coming from.

But it upsets me, a lot, that OSM has no interest in being friendly to  
some business models, largely because in n years' time I harbour  
dreams of moving to a cottage in the Welsh Marches somewhere and  
plying my trade as an artisan cartographer (inter alia).

The other year I drew a map for our village website and posted it  
there. Within a few months Whizzy Web Design (fictitious name), a  
company based in the village, was charging £300 for Professional  
Quality Websites (four pages of Dreamweavered HTML) and signing up a  
few of the local shops. Usually, on one of these four pages, was my  
map. Because I had the copyright I could say "aha, you varmints, I'll  
have a few quid of your £300 for that".

As it stands, if I'd used OSM data for such a map, I wouldn't have  
been able to say that.

That's fine. But what I don't understand is _why_ OSM doesn't want me  
to be able to do that. When I'm holed up in a shack halfway up a  
mountain, that few quid will be my daily wage, which is why I care.

Richard