[OSM-legal-talk] Future relicensing in the contributor terms and data imports

[Jukka Rahkonen]

James Livingston <lists at ...> writes:

> On 23/08/2010, at 4:22 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> Not only the Contributor Terms - the whole project is. Data importing 
>> should always be the exception and not the rule.
> 
> But is it though? I guess that's the nub of the issue with data imports 
> and licensing - some people are against 
> data imports and some people like them.

I remember that Frederik has used a word "interoperability" in some of his 
mails. Most OSM folks seem to think that interoperability means either
a) transparent tiles and OpenLayers or
b) vacuuming all the geodata with somehow suitable license into OSM.

I believe there could be also other ways. It is understandable 
that road data are imported into the main OSM database because we have 
lots of our own highway data with better and more up-to-date knowlegde 
about road attributes. Road data must also be noded for making it 
suitable for navigation and OSM data model with the spaghetti topology 
and all the data on a one single layer suits this use. However, some 
of the data which have been imported could as well be used from somewhere 
else, like from a separate OSM-Import database or from an external service.

Use of SRTM countour lines in OpenCyclemap, Openmtbmap and in some other 
places is one (only?) good example about using non-OSM data together with 
OSM data without imports.

It is not really a pleasure to try to follow the rules given in documents like
http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/documents/Network_Services/INSPIRE%20Draft%20Technical%20Guidance%20Download%20%28Version%202.0%29.pdf

Still I think that it is better this way than by having a huge Central 
Spatial Data Infrastructure database in Brussels. Perhaps we will also
start thinking some day that all the data which are possible to import
into OSM do not need to be imported but they can still be utilised.
I believe that this was what Frederik meant, not that we should map
everything by ourselves.