[OSM-legal-talk] OSM's future Was: Re: Proposed "Metadata"-Guideline

Alex Barth alex at mapbox.com
Mon Oct 12 22:24:55 UTC 2015


On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 4:05 PM, Steve Coast <steve at asklater.com> wrote:

> > "our problems" would of course need more definition and I'm running the
> risk here of misinterpreting what you said. I'm thinking about all the
> cases where OSM isn't used yet, all the mapping that isn't happing in OSM
> yet. OSM has the potential to fundamentally change how we capture and
> share knowledge about the world but we aren't anywhere near the full impact
> we should be having. 300,000 active mappers is impressive but the world is
> much bigger. At a time where the internet that was supposed to be Open is
> turning more and more into a closed game of big players and growth for OSM
> is linear - what's our plan?
>
> Yes - we discovered that OSM is linear at CloudMade and our VCs were
> worried too, but that’s not quite the same thing as it being a problem for
> OSM.
>

Reducing licensing ambiguity and making OpenStreetMap more usable by more
people effects non-profit organizations, governments, academics and
companies (both public companies like your employer Telenav and private
companies like Mapbox that have taken VC). Our VC's aren't worried, I'm
worried. All of us on this list are on the same team, we want OpenStreetMap
to be the conical data set for the world. Mapbox buys address data and
directions data from traditional third party providers, much like Telenav
does this for Scout. Its one of the data sources for us, in addition to
OpenAddresses and other open government data sets that have clear licensing.

How is it a bad thing that OSM is used in more places where it can't be
used today and hence grows? The lack of clarity around use cases like
geocoding infects other datasets with ODBL is killing the incentives for
businesses, NGOs and government to contribute to OSM. Let's clarify the
important use cases, leave share alike intact and we all have a better OSM.
Looking back over to the other thread, I don't think we're that far off
from each other:
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2015-October/008283.html
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