[Talk-ca] Region of York Data Imports

Stewart C. Russell scruss at gmail.com
Sat Dec 6 02:23:25 UTC 2014


On 14-11-29 10:37 AM, Piper, Stephanie wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I work for the Region of York and we want to add our data to Open
> Street Map. All data that we are adding is available under our Open
> Data portal and is licensed through our Open Data license and is
> available for unlimited use and reuse. I work in the Geographic
> Information Services Branch at the Region and this data is highly
> authoritative and we feel as though it adds value to the current Open
> Street Map base.
>

Hi Stephanie, thanks for your note. It's always good to see
municipalities opening up their data, and better still to see what
citizens can do with it. There are a couple of potential issues that are
likely to hinder the integration of the Region of York's data into OSM:

 1. York Region’s Open Data Licence
    <http://www.york.ca/wps/portal/yorkhome/yorkregion/yr/statisticsanddata/opendata/%21ut/p/a1/jY_NCsIwEISfpQ8g2Yb-5BoimqSWejPmIovVGtCk2ODBp7cWr1r3tAvf7MwQSwyxHh-uw-iCx-v7tsVB8bWSsgLdZEwAh4ZrWjJgVTkC-xGAL8NhTq__MKD3WtQdsT3Gy8L5cyBmiGPCIbrjgL5tMSIxoT_5adsROz2lNCtkKkCDbBioVbnNl0ymIPIZoKIf4Eet_maeGwlO8SR5AYDq2Kw%21/dl5/d5/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh/>
    is its own /very slightly different/ variant of the UK Government’s
    Open Government Licence for Public Sector Information. It’s not
    quite exactly like any other licence on CLIPol <http://clipol.org/>,
    and the main sticking point is the requirement to revoke attribution
    should the Region deem it necessary. OSM is volunteer run, and we
    don’t have the resources to have legal experts review all these
    different licences. It’s often just easier for the project not to
    use the data in cases like these.

 2. While the Region’s data might be of exceptional quality, OSM has a
    policy of not importing data over where data already exists.
    Integrating imports without overwriting volunteer mappers’
    contributions is extremely time consuming. OSM’s spatial accuracy
    may not be as good as a city professional survey, but the project
    typically has new features mapped by volunteers well ahead of any
    local government maps.


I know the list's welcome may appear a little qualified, but thanks for
joining us!

Best Wishes,
 Stewart
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