[talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes

[Steve Coast]

On 7/8/2011 4:28 AM, Sam Couter wrote:
>> Also, your frame of reference is with OSM up and running and having these kinds of relationships. When I started OSM we had no data at all and nobody wanted to give us data under any license, let alone cc. So those of us who climbed the mountain to get those people to give us data see asking people to switch (such as ordnance survey for example) as a far smaller problem.
> I don't see it as a small problem. Australian government data is mostly
> released under CC licences, which are widely compatible with most open uses.
> They've hit the 99% mark, so there's not a lot of motivation to change
> further. OSM-F has placed OSM in the remaining 1%.

Perhaps we're talking at cross purposes because most of the community 
I'm familiar with, which is all of the EU and the US, consider 
government data a nice starting point but mappers on the ground as 
generally much better. Is the perception in Australia that you should 
just do whatever the government says you should do? Or that OSM should 
just be a host for government data?

>> Im confused that I was discussing nearmap but you jumped to the government, what am I missing?
> The bit where you mentioned "large sclerotic government institutions". I
> think we've just about covered Nearmap, and the government sources in
> Australia are collectively the next biggest potential data source.

So they're only a potential source, things have not been imported?

>> In any case, as someone who built this project and has convinced many organizations and government agencies to open up, I urge you to have a longer timeframe outlook. These types of agencies tend to get with it in the end. Even the ordnance survey has, for example.
> You've mentioned Ordnance Survey many times. Are they the only success story?

No, we have lots, just read the LWG minutes.

>
> Australian agencies have already gotten with it. We have data available under
> various open licences. How are Australians supposed to go to the Australian
> government agencies (individually, of course) and explain that while it's
> exactly what we've been asking for for a long time, it's not good enough
> because one specific project chose a licence based on concerns that they
> needed to protect rights that don't exist in Australia or even in the
> majority of the world?

Well by not being defeatest for a start. What I think I'm trying to get 
across is that we convinced our governments, in fact these days they 
want to be involved with OSM rather than OSM going to them to be 
involved. So, why is it different in australia? Is there a culture of 
submitting to the government (which would be the opposite of the US, but 
closer to the UK) or something? What are the sticking points, and how 
are they different from the sticking points we managed to go through in 
the EU and US?

Steve


>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-au mailing list
> Talk-au at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/attachments/20110708/655e9501/attachment.html>