[OSM-talk-ie] Open Database License

[Tadeusz Cantwell]

Probably one of the most complex topics that we as a community have to deal
with is licenses, in the past, it was mainly watching out for people using
proprietary sources. That had a simple yes or no outcome.

Now that the Irish government is opening data under the ODbL, with
different clauses, that becomes harder because some allow reuse and others
don't, although the trend is towards reuse. Available at
https://data.gov.ie/

An interesting question came from the community is how do we know when open
data from the government has been used. The only answer is if the mapper
cited their source, which of course we can check for, but it would really
be useful to know the communities experience at a personal level, with
using the data to get a better idea its impact in day to day mapping, or
not.

So are you aware of the site, have you used it to fill in missing
information on OSM?  Did you cite an Irish gov source? Would you be
interested in knowing more about this data?

it's hard to do a poll by email, so I'll set up one up on Facebook and
Twitter. But reply here if you have a long form reply or prefer not to use
social media.

As I said this is a complex topic, which I think will have evolving
solutions as our knowledge and understanding improves. To be honest I
presume this will be a learning process for most of us. It certainly will
be for me. However, by tackling this topic it will be easier to advocate
government departments to open more data by showing what can be done with
what is available now. Allowing us to create better maps.

Tadeusz Cantwell