[Talk-GB] Private tracks through a farmyard

[Mark Goodge]

On 21/04/2022 19:19, Martin Wynne wrote:
> On 21/04/2022 19:03, Mark Goodge wrote:
>>
>> If you mean this one:
>>
>> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.ordnancesurvey.osmaps
>>
>> then it doesn't use OSM data.
> 
> Hi Mark,
> 
> Yes it does, since a recent upgrade. Here is the attribution:
> 
>   https://85a.uk/images/osmaps_osm_attribution.png

Ah, OK. That's not visible on the app, for some reason. But it clearly 
isn't just OSM data - there's stuff in there that isn't on "pure" 
OSM-based maps - in particular, it's showing building and property 
outlines to much greater detail than we have mapped in most places, plus 
it's including points (nodes) that OSM doesn't have. So I'm not sure 
that deleting tracks from OSM is necessarily going to solve the 
landowner's problem - if OS has them from its own low-value data then 
they'll still be there.

I do also feel a little irritated with OS here. Their free maps don't 
show rights of way information, presumably because they want to push 
people to paying for the Landranger and Explorer maps. But rights of way 
data is open source, it's published under the OGL and incorporated into 
OSM data - even though the default Carto stylesheet doesn't render them 
visibly, they're there in the data and available for users (in 
particular, routers). So there's no technical or legal reason why OS 
can't include them in the free layer, it's a deliberate commercial 
decision to exclude them. But that's going to lead to precisely the 
issues experienced by the landowner in this case. And for OS to suggest 
that the solution is to delete the tracks from OSM is not far off 
vandalism. I don't know if we have any contacts within OS, but I think 
it needs to be very forcibly expressed to OS that we strongly disapprove 
of that advice and consider it an abuse of process. A weakness in OS's 
maps can't be fixed by making ours worse.

Mark