[OSM-legal-talk] license change effect on un-tagged nodes

[Maarten Deen]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2011 02:18:46 -0700 (PDT), Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> Maarten Deen wrote:
>> Turn restrictions, maximum speeds, oneway streets, even the value
>> of the highway tag is not a geographical fact.
>
> Sure they are.
>
> If I walk about 20 yards from my front door, there's a "no entry" 
> sign at a
> certain lat/long. If I walk a bit further along, facing the other 
> way,
> there's a "one way" sign at another lat/long. From those two 
> geographical
> facts[1], I can deduce that a particular road is oneway. Therefore I 
> tagged
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/1058809 with oneway=yes.
>
> Same goes for turn restrictions, maximum speeds, and certainly over 
> here,
> highway tags. The one major exception in the OSM database is 
> administrative
> boundaries.

IMHO that's stretching the "geographic" bit very far. Sure, the fact 
that there is a sign is a geographic fact, but the fact that that 
signifies something for the road or object that's there is just 
convention.
And highway value is certainly not geographic. There is nothing about 
the location or presence of a road that makes it "motorway" or 
"tertiary". That is only because it is designated as such. That 
designation can change anytime, but by doing so you don't change the 
geography of the place.

Regards,
Maarten