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

[James Andrewartha]

On 9 July 2011 02:10, Steve Coast <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
> 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?

No, we also think the mappers on the ground are much better. But we
can't upload the government data ourselves as we don't have the rights
the CTs require. Why should we have to wait for government agencies to
upload the data themselves (if they can even agree to the CTs
themselves) when we could just do it ourselves with the data they
release?

> 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?

I haven't dealt with government agencies myself, but I can't say I've
see any Australian ones wanting to be involved with OSM, as opposed to
just releasing their data under liberal licenses in general. From
their point of view, what does OSM offer them that they can't do with
a PSMA license that they probably already have?

James Andrewartha