[talk-au] Haitian Earthquake Emphasizes Danger of a Split Geo Community

[James Livingston]

On 16/01/2010, at 9:32 AM, John Smith wrote:
> This seems like a spurious argument, ok your suggestion will allow
> both projects to "profit" from your data, but any additions can't be
> shared back with your suggested project, nor will Google share any of
> it's data back, unless it's in Google's own best interest, any data
> Google releases won't allow commercial use, so you still wouldn't be
> able to incorporate it.
> 
> So Google gets free labour, and you get nothing in return... sounds
> win-loose to me.

If getting something in return is what you want from it, then yes. On the other hand if you just want people to be able to use your data, then it's fine.

People have mentioned this many times before but front page of the OSM wiki says "The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways".  Share-alike provisions form a legal restriction on what you can use it for, holding you back from combining the data with other datasets under an incompatible licence.

It's all a matter of tradeoffs and what is most important to you - being able to use it for whatever you want, or getting the most data in OSM.