[Talk-ca] State of OSM maps in Calgary - comparison with Germany

Wed Jul 5 01:57:36 UTC 2023

The only problem is that the license CC 4.0 needs attribution. It is not clear if adding the source in the source tag is enough or if it needs to appear on the map itself in the footer for the end-user, which OSM and id editor do not do.

However, I discussed with a lawyer specialized into these kind of licensing problems some times ago, and he told me clearly that whatever the license they put on their website, this is 100% public data. Addresses, street names and building footprints are 100% public because you can just take a picture and figure out the information yourself from public streets. The only exceptions are confidential informations like the names of building owners, or license plates, as an example. Same thing for streetview imagery: there is no way Google/Bing or any other private company can protect or add a license to pictures taken from public streets, because anyone can take the almost same picture from the street and streets are not private properties. The only exceptions would be if photos were taken as works of arts (cleary this does not apply to street view photos) or if they did not blur private confidential informations like faces or license plates (which they do). This is not true for aerial imagery though, which are protected because not accessible to the public and can reveal private images which are not seen from the public streets. As for the land role or address data, nobody can license it or restrict access to it, so I guess it is good to know. HOWEVER, I will ALWAYS ask for official permission (and you should do the same) before using open data for OSM use because this is more polite and reduce the probability of government agencies restricting access to data in the future.

And, most importantly, you must know that land role data, addresses data and building footprints available on open data websites contain ERRORS, ambiguious informations, mismatches, etc., so NEVER BATCH IMPORT anything before surveying or validating the data. This is more difficult, it takes a long time, but at the end you have better data and that’s the beauty of OSM.

> On Jul 4, 2023, at 9:08 PM, Daniel Bégin <jfd553 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Take care about Québec guys, their CC 4.0 license is not acceptable according to OSM license working group.
>
> Get [Outlook for Android](https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg)
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: Stephen Bosch <posting at vodacomm.ca>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 4, 2023 8:15:36 PM
> To: Justin Tracey <j3tracey at gmail.com>; talk-ca at openstreetmap.org <talk-ca at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] State of OSM maps in Calgary - comparison with Germany
>
> Hi Justin, thanks for this.
>
> Maybe the best thing for me to do is to try to do an import of one
> (gotta start small) of these problematic neighbourhoods in Calgary,
> perhaps with the help of your tool, just to learn what's involved (I've
> never contributed to OSM before).
>
> Stephen
>
> Am 04.07.23 um 23:40 schrieb Justin Tracey:
>> It's a combination of licensing issues and the difficulty of getting
>> consensus for imports.
>>
>> The former is a problem of each source of data (municipality, city,
>> province, quango) typically deciding their lawyers have to make minor
>> tweaks to the wording, which means it's no longer the same license as
>> any of the approved ones, so must go through the whole LWG approval
>> process again. The easiest way to work around this in most cases is
>> getting explicit written consent from the source for use with OSM. See:
>> [https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.openstreetmap.org%2Fwiki%2FImport%2FGetting_permission&data=05%7C01%7C%7C954248f5da3e4b6f3cbc08db7ce500b1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638241095243952845%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Mgack8Chp03Yqb4GC3SOMcirWvzRu%2BJfDOkF%2Bp3rqdM%3D&reserved=0](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Getting_permission)
>>
>> The latter is a problem of buy-in from the community. Large-scale
>> building imports have been discussed numerous times, with varying
>> degrees of success (e.g., Toronto's building import seems to be
>> complete). The most recent of these discussions is, I believe, this one,
>> which has been silent for a few years now:
>> [https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.openstreetmap.org%2Fwiki%2FCanada_-_The_Open_Database_of_Buildings&data=05%7C01%7C%7C954248f5da3e4b6f3cbc08db7ce500b1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638241095243952845%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=uSH6Aa26B%2BvDpp42zlgHdFuAf2n8aKBEtaOJpzO8hGY%3D&reserved=0](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canada_-_The_Open_Database_of_Buildings)
>>
>> Since then, there has been an address data export from the government of
>> Canada under an approved license, but I don't believe anyone has
>> proposed a full data import. The closest I know of is this tool I made
>> to use the data as a source, not as an automated import (it's currently
>> targeted at Waterloo Region, but I designed it to be easy to reuse
>> anywhere covered in the StatCan data):
>> [https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fjtracey%2FWaterlooRegionAddresses&data=05%7C01%7C%7C954248f5da3e4b6f3cbc08db7ce500b1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638241095243952845%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=kmWyknM%2BVsr5rXHOdRYxRP5Pr0RlOFFCEGoU60aK%2BOs%3D&reserved=0](https://github.com/jtracey/WaterlooRegionAddresses)
>>
>> - Justin
>>
>> On 2023-07-04 17:13, Stephen Bosch wrote:
>>> Hi everybody, bonjour -
>>>
>>> I live in Germany and I use OSM on a daily basis for address look-ups
>>> and navigation. I've got the OSM+ app on my phone and it works very
>>> well. In fact, the OSM maps are often better than Google Maps.
>>>
>>> When I'm back in Canada (Calgary, mostly), it is practically unusable.
>>> The most obvious weakness is that buildings are often unnumbered or
>>> missing entirely, so simple address look-ups fail. For a dramatic
>>> example of this, have a look at the Capitol Hill neighbourhood in
>>> Calgary:
>>>
>>> [https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.openstreetmap.org%2Fnode%2F106980291%23map%3D17%2F51.07172%2F-114.10028&data=05%7C01%7C%7C954248f5da3e4b6f3cbc08db7ce500b1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638241095243952845%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=7KbILNoAR%2BlW2S3vfQvUIDE9n5tLEz7tDdf1JzV9MAM%3D&reserved=0](https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/106980291#map=17/51.07172/-114.10028)
>>>
>>> While it's true that there is a large community of contributors in
>>> Germany, the main reason the OSM maps are so good there is that states
>>> and municipalities share rich geodata freely, with some even actively
>>> contributing to OSM. Many public services rely on OSM data, so it's in
>>> their interest that it be of high quality.
>>>
>>> The City of Calgary seems to have an open data policy:
>>>
>>> [https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dm32hxV8md4c&data=05%7C01%7C%7C954248f5da3e4b6f3cbc08db7ce500b1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638241095243952845%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=kK5%2BxaY7ddwwiQrG1nQ3W3vopCbv1Q1l55KqaEHlqj0%3D&reserved=0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m32hxV8md4c)
>>>
>>> [https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.calgary.ca%2Fservice-lines%2F2023-2026-city-services%2Fdata-analytics-information-access.html&data=05%7C01%7C%7C954248f5da3e4b6f3cbc08db7ce500b1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638241095243952845%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=vwZhRRs3dpqiQt5NUqJkhWw4LNCxiMSb9o8EUmBBufQ%3D&reserved=0](https://www.calgary.ca/service-lines/2023-2026-city-services/data-analytics-information-access.html)
>>>
>>> [https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdata.calgary.ca%2F&data=05%7C01%7C%7C954248f5da3e4b6f3cbc08db7ce500b1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638241095243952845%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=lGtqhxppbtzfgEsoPF2DaRwVk%2Bz9BadJ3EjKg22%2F8zU%3D&reserved=0](https://data.calgary.ca/)
>>>
>>> so I would expect the same to apply there. For example, there is a 2D
>>> buildings map for Calgary that seems to be complete:
>>>
>>> [https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdata.calgary.ca%2FBase-Maps%2F2D-Buildings-Map%2Fh98y-bpv6&data=05%7C01%7C%7C954248f5da3e4b6f3cbc08db7ce500b1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638241095243952845%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=sFneMA1Pnj1kfHzogdTGSwxd0N%2Bh7tfOSDUNZphqihU%3D&reserved=0](https://data.calgary.ca/Base-Maps/2D-Buildings-Map/h98y-bpv6)
>>>
>>> Here's a 3D LIDAR-derived map:
>>>
>>> [https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmapgallery.calgary.ca%2Fapps%2Fbcd22e7089a440e792628ac61f35f4c1%2Fexplore&data=05%7C01%7C%7C954248f5da3e4b6f3cbc08db7ce500b1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638241095243952845%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=02jYnqYQchzL0UX653jlezRQ7%2FsqUHBizr41fcX2sFo%3D&reserved=0](https://mapgallery.calgary.ca/apps/bcd22e7089a440e792628ac61f35f4c1/explore)
>>>
>>> In short, the public data appear to be available. Why aren't they in
>>> OSM? Is this a licence problem?
>>>
>>> Kind regards
>>>
>>> Stephen Bosch
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Talk-ca mailing list
>>> Talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
>>> [https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.openstreetmap.org%2Flistinfo%2Ftalk-ca&data=05%7C01%7C%7C954248f5da3e4b6f3cbc08db7ce500b1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638241095243952845%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=hVE32ln7SLgT%2Fpod4XRmKEMzCUc%2Bzz2nhX5clT0J31w%3D&reserved=0](https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca)
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