[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Users whose contributions are in the public domain

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 10:03:20PM +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
> Frederik Ramm wrote:
> > None that I know of; I suppose they have all spent a lot of money to  
> > be able to process and improve TIGER and they probably want to recoup  
> > that investment through proprietary licensing.
> > 
> > Is it relevant to us?
> 
> Surely it's highly relevant to your assertion that we would build a 
> strong community around OSM if it was PD? The fact that none has formed 
> around an existing large body of geodata ripe for improvement doesn't 
> help your case.

Perhaps this is true for TIGER, but it seems to me that geonames.org is
exactly the opposite: a public domain dataset (vmap0) has been
embraced/extended into (in some cases) dozens or more languages per
place name, and many many corrections to data.

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer