[OSM-legal-talk] license change effect on un-tagged nodes
Frederik Ramm
frederik at remote.org
Tue Jul 5 22:37:12 BST 2011
Hi,
Stephan Knauss wrote:
> The mapper who agreed did not only move part of the nodes replacing
> their information with new one and confirming the existence.
I think that's the key point here. We cannot know whether the new mapper
actually had a valid source that would have let him place these nodes.
Imagine: The mapper has collected a GPX track for a 10km long cycleway
that, partly, followed a riverbank. When mapping, he finds that the
current river geometry in OSM seems to be 20 metres offset because it
meanders in and out of his cycleway. He doesn't have a full new river
geometry; he only knows that in 3 locations along the 10km track, the
river is obviously, and consistently offset - maybe the river is tagged
"source=landsat" which would explain that -, and thus the mapper simply
moves the whole river and all its nodes 20 metres into one direction.
This is a contrived example but not totally unrealstic; I have
definitely done similar things myself!
Now according to your logic, the new mapper gains sole copyright
(provided such a thing exists) for the 10km stretch of river, even
though he never even looked at the Landsat images or whatever.
On the other hand, had the new mapper traveled along the river in a boat
and collected a GPX track which later led him to do the exact same thing
- move the whole river by 20 metres in one direction -, then that could
be said to constitute a "confirmation of the existence" and a
replacement of the geometry information with new, originally collected
information.
Now if my example was really outlandish and something like that almost
never happens, then one could probably say, to hell with it, let's
assume any moving of a geometry can only be made from original sources.
But if there is reason to believe that this happens often, then we must
err on the side of caution and flag the river (in this example) for
deletion.
Now if the mapper comes along and sees the river flagged for deletion,
and remembers that he traveled the river in a boat, and maybe even has
the GPX track, there's nothing to keep him from simply overriding the
standard assumption of "we will have to delete this river". We don't yet
have a mechanism for that; currently the mapper would have to delete and
re-create the river but personally I am in favour of a special,
temporary license override tag that people could add to an object,
something like
"i_have_personally_investigated_the_history_of_this_object_and_i_can_vouch_for_it_being_odbl_clean=true".
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frederik at remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
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