[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] License to kill

[80n]

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 11:44 PM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>wrote:

>
> Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> > I tend to side with OJW on this. You weren't at the last SOTM (hope to
> > see you this time?) but I had a very nice graph of the expected value of
> > OSM data once the community stops working on it, and, what shall I say,
> > I made it look like "life expectancy of mankind after we lose the bees".
>
> Ah, but assuming that "expected value" is uniform across all users is where
> you go wrong.
>
> I don't disagree that the value of a five-year old street map of Karlsruhe,
> say,  is vastly less than it was at the time. The value of a five-year old
> street map of Charlbury, on the other hand, is pretty much the same as it
> is
> now - in fact the map up at the railway station says (c) 2001 on it. And
> the
> value of a 100-year old canal map, when combined with the knowledge of a
> subject specialist, is amazingly high.
>
> The very fact that there are 70,000 "source=npe" tags in the database
> fairly
> comprehensively disproves the notion that "maps need to be regularly
> updated
> to stay useful".
>

I support Frederik's view that the community is the most valuable aspect of
OSM.  Take a look at TIGER data to see what use map data is without an
active community.

It's why I don't believe that OSM would work without both attribution and
share-alike.  These provide the basic assurances and guarantees to the
community that they are not going to be exploited, not now, not in the
future, not ever.

As for the value of NPE maps (50 year old out-of-copyright Ordnance Survey
maps)? They are an excellent source of railways, rivers, canals, lakes,
coastlines and a lot of villages and rural roads, and some of those feature
are hard to get any other way, but the real value is in mapping the places
where people actually live - towns and cities - and the added value is the
detail that changes more frequently and more recently - amenities,
restaurants, new housing developments, one-way streets, cycle routes, wind
farms, etc.  And that is what a strong community gives to OSM.

The fact is, in this license debate, we should be prioritising the interests
of the contributors over the interested of the data consumers every time.
There will always be use-cases that can't be accommodated, like your canal
maps, but its better to have a vibrant  community than a license that
maximises the possible use cases at the expense of hard won contributors.

I'm sorry if that means that OSM doesn't help you with your canal maps, I
wish it could, but without a community we wouldn't even be having this
conversation.

80n


>
> cheers
> Richard
> --
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>
>
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