[OSM-legal-talk] What will be removed after license change?

Ilya Zverev zverik at textual.ru
Mon Dec 20 14:30:16 GMT 2010


Hi!

For ordinary mappers like me, who does not care about license wording (as
long as it's free and open), the single most terrifying issue of coming
ODbL is that some data will be deleted. Not only data that was on the map
and we didn't feel the need to survey it while driving. But also something
that we spent time correcting.

For example, today I found a node place=hamlet, name=What. I've changed
that to place=village, name=Another, also added 6 other tags and moved the
node to its actual location based on satellite imagery. Now let's suppose
the creator of that node isn't going to support ODbL (I do). Will this node
survive the transition?

Let's imagine a node with place=hamlet, placed on some village based on
satellite imagery by the same stubborn person. I've surveyed it and added a
tag name=Village. Will it survive? Is my contribution (naming a village)
substantial?

There are more complex cases with ways. I've aligned hundreds of
poorly-drawn buildings using cadastre. Almost every point was moved, but
tags are the same. I didn't want to lose history, so I took a hard path and
not deleted anything. But if the original mapper with potlatch does not
like ODbL, will buildings survive?

If someone who does not accept ODbL put address tags on those buildings
afterwards (which could be placed by anyone using PD source), and in
process even fixed some points using satellite imagery - joined them, or
added a corner, - will those buildings survive?

Who will decide, and can there ever be an algorithm to determine if one
person's change was substantial enough to consider an object his property
and to leave or delete that object when changing the license of OSM data?

Sorry if those questions have been asked, there was so much talking about
the license itself, I must have missed it.


IZ



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