[OSM-legal-talk] decision removing data

[80n]

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> 80n wrote:
>
>> Does anyone know whether the code exists to do this yet?
>>
>
> I doubt it.
>
>
>  How are way splits handled (only one half of the way will have a full
>> history)?
>>
>
> I think they can be auto-detected (i.e. where in one changeset, one way
> suddenly loses some nodes and another springs up that uses exactly those).
>

This quickly gets quite complex when factored across multiple generations of
way splits.  Many roads start of as a single way that get repeatedly split
as one way sections, bridges and other detail gets added.

Changesets are a relatively recent invention.  Edits prior to the
introduction of changesets don't have any formal grouping so this approach
will not work for old data.

Even older data that was converted from segments will have no history at all
because it was discarded.  This has quite a significant impact on early
roads such as the M25 motorway (London Orbital) which was orginally created
as segments.  While it could easily be re-derived from Yahoo imagery today
the current ways are surely based on data for which there is no complete
history and would logically get deleted.  The knock on effects of this and
similar random deletions are likely to be problematic.



>
> Such auto-detection could be limited to areas where we have recorded
> contributions that are not being relicensed; in all other areas we would not
> have to bother.
>

Prolific editors don't tend to restrict their activity to a single
location.  This might be more widespread than anticipated.


>
> Any such mechanism, in my eyes, need not be 100% perfect; it is sufficient
> to make a honest attempt at doing the right thing, and if a few things slip
> through, then fix them in case of complaints.
>

Anyone who cares strongly enough to not want to relicense their work will
probably make a lot of complaints if their work is not fully purged  This
could generate a very large amount of manual remediation.


> But I am not in the LWG and they might, unbeknownst to be, already have
> something that works.
>
>
If there is anything under development it would be good if we could see it.
It is unlikely to be a trivial piece of code and I'd be very surprised if it
can be developed by September 1st if it hasn't already been started.

The whole relicensing effort would be a bit of a non-starter if this
deletion process cannot be done.

80n
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