[Osmf-talk] "ArcGIS supports Openstreetmap"

[Sam Larsen]

> From: Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan at sanchezortega.es>
> To: osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> Cc: Sam Larsen <samlarsen1 at yahoo.co.uk>; jo at frot.org
> Sent: Mon, 13 September, 2010 9:31:13
> Subject: Re: [Osmf-talk] "ArcGIS supports Openstreetmap"
> 
> On Monday 13 September 2010 03:30:17 Sam Larsen wrote:
> > If what you are  trying to say is that you feel uneasy with ESRI services
> > consuming large  numbers of map tiles - then raise the issue in plain
> > english 
> 
> Well, I've seen the OSM editor a couple of times and what makes me  uneasy is 
> the fear of that editor destroying the integrity of the data.  Whenever a new 
> editor appears in the field, it tends to not be very careful  with stuff like 
> version collisions or integrity of the  relations.
> 
> I've seen the ESRI OSM editor crashing on me when downloading  two bounding 
> boxes one after the other, so I'll say it in plain english: I  can't trust 
> ESRI OSM editor right now for complex or long edits. The OSM  schema is so 
> alien to the point-line-area schema that I highly doubt the  first iterations 
> of the software will work flawlessly.

I agree - certainly from my limited use of the editor, it seems there is a lot 
of potential for 'different' data loads than we get from other editors.  This 
editor will suffer a number of teething problems like other editors, but may not 
have the large open source developer community behind it to quickly resolve 
issues.  My only real remedy to that is for myself to contribute to the editor 
and try to feed back my comments & thoughts to others at ESRI to make it less 
prone to upload messes.  I just have to try to find the time to spend on it ;)

> 
> My other  issue, which I raised to Roberto Lucchi (ESRI Geoportal guy) during 
> FOSS4G  is the issue of deriving content and licensing. Most ESRI users are 
> just not  aware of the legal implications of tracing over imagery (while we, 
> OSMers,  are). Tracing over the ESRI-branded base imagery is tempting, but not 

> assuredly safe.
> 

I completely agree with this point.  Sometimes i cringe at the thought of many 
users tracing over imagery with no understanding of the licensing issues.  
However, to a certain extent we have always had these users & as we expand more 
(especially in other realms like HOT or by lowering the barrier to entry 
[Strategic Working Group?]) there are a lot of users coming into the project 
with no regard for licensing.  All we can do is to try to engage with & educate 
those users, keep an eye out for suspect edits & do more of what we have been 
doing.

> I do agree that OSM could use the expertise of more  professionals, and tapping 
>
> into the ESRI user base might be a good thing. A  cool thing would be 
> abstracting the data access layer in order to make it 
> geodatabase-independent, but keep all the algorithms working (open source, 
> remember?). gvSIG and QGIS, here we go! This would haste the sync problems 
> IMHO.
> 
> 
> What the ... - I might just go to the spanish ESRI user  conf and say just that 
>
> aloud.
> 
> -- 
> ----------------------------------
> Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan at sanchezortega.es>
> 
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