[Talk-GB] New British Waterways map; why not use OSM?

[Richard Fairhurst]

Tom Chance wrote:
> I completely agree that the tools aren't there yet, but could they
> not have used OSM for their database?

In theory, yes. But there are huge costs to that, too. The effort 
required to work with the community, and in particular, through the 
tagging minefield. The extra complexity in some form of integration 
between Waterscape and OSM, including synchronising the two databases. 
The licence complications (BW is principally an OS GIS shop, after all) 
- and BW's lawyers are all tied up right now on the move from quango to 
charity status. I wouldn't have used OSM to do it when I was at 
Waterscape, and I know more about using OSM than most people!

BW has about three pennies to rub together (admittedly, it would have 
more if it didn't pay its directors such vast sums). If it can spend two 
days knocking up something with PHP and MySQL, rather than a fortnight 
doing an OSM-based project, I can't blame it for doing so. We need to 
recognise that "collaborative+latitude+longitude" does not always need 
to equal OSM.

cheers
Richard