[Osmf-talk] Release - OpenLitterMap.com Paper now Published Online [ OPEN ACCESS ]

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 14 June 2018, Seán Lynch wrote:
> [...]
>
> I honestly thought that people in this group would have been
> delighted to see some initiative in trying to produce new forms of
> Open Geographic Maps and data that can also be used to fill gaps in
> OSM. The response overall, not limited to any group, has been
> profoundly disappointing [...]

I think what you need to understand is that the relatively cold reaction 
you get in the OSM community is not due to you not complying with some 
formal policy.  Most people in the OSM context do not really care that 
much about it but you can expect to get a relatively strong reaction 
here since this is the official OSMF list.

The general reaction is due to your use of the terms 'open' and 'open 
data' in a way that is very different from how OpenStreetMap uses these 
terms.

To many of us your project looks very much like countless commercial 
attention economy projects that use openwashing (i.e. advertising what 
they do to be 'open' in some way to be more appealing to potential 
contributors/user).  The following aspects to me very much support this 
impression:

* that you apparently need to register to access the data
* that there are no license terms mentioned for the data anywhere, in 
fact the "all data is free to view and download" indicates that the 
data is probably the garden variety "you may look at it but nothing 
else" kind which has nothing in common with the Open Data idea we have 
in OSM with the freedoms to use, modify and redistribute.
* that the registration page offers you the the typical paid 
subscription options of commercial services that try to get people 
hooked with a free service but later limits it to get people to choose 
the paid options.

In short: Except for the Open'X'Map title there appears to be absolutely 
nothing on your site that indicates that this has anything to do with 
the philosophy of data openness we value in OSM.  And this is why you 
get the underwhelmed and critical reactions here.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/