[talk-ph] Philippines License Change-over Readiness - Contact and Remapping

[Michael Collinson]

Hi all and best wishes to you and families for 2012.

I've regretfully not mapped in the Philippines for a good long time now 
but I still lurk on this list and would like to ask you to join the UK 
in a License Working Group pilot project to engage global mappers on a 
country-by-country basis.  I see that there is not a single 
Philippines-based mapper with data that has explicitly declined the new 
contributor terms, thanks all!

The upcoming move to the Open Database Licence means that a small number 
of users have chosen for their contributions not to continue within OSM. 
There are also folks who are just unreachable or who have lost 
interest.  Since we want OSM to remain the best map in the world, we can 
remap the affected areas now, so that little difference is noticeable on 
changeover day. The target for this day is presently 1st April 2012. The 
License Working Group would now like to formally urge Philippine mappers 
to look at  your local mapping areas, contact anyone who still might 
agree and then remap if you can.

Critical mass for the change-over has certainly been achieved.  On a 
global basis, over 96.8% of nodes and 96.3% of highways [1]  are by 
folks who have accepted the new terms. However, we still have globally 
36 million nodes that may not survive the license change and 4.2 million 
problematic ways where some or all value will be lost [2].  This is 
still a large number, (particularly if they are in your local mapping 
area!), and we would like to reduce it. In the Philippines, slightly 
less nodes and highways have been created by folks who have accepted the 
new terms.  Looking at the current stats at 
http://odbl.poole.ch/phillippines-20111208-20120104-poly.html, I'd guess 
that if  contributor hellodeck can be reached, that would tip the 
balance. Does anyone know if that is possible?

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Remapping is a specific up-to-date 
resource on remapping and 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Help_preparing_for_the_license_change 
give broader background information.  I myself use Frederik Ramm's 
excellent License Change View on OSM Inspector [3], [4] to pin points 
problematic locales and then click the Potlatch icon and use that to 
identify mappers and what information was from acceptors and could still 
be used, (click the way or node ID in the Advanced View), and to remap. 
JOSM has similar functionality but I am less familiar with it.

I strongly recommend that first you look at your areas and contact 
undecided mappers via the OpenStreetMap messaging system or directly if 
you know them. Ask if they would not mind logging into their account and 
accepting even if they no longer wish to continue mapping as their 
previous contribution is important to you.  I have just finished 
remapping my UK mapping area and it took me about four weeks of 
contacting folks, waiting and then armchair remapping using a 
combination of some UK-specific resources, Bing and my memory.  I found 
lots of small contributors who are no longer mapping and probably did 
not realise that their contributions are still important and that other 
edits rely on them. Response was modest but enough to make it worth 
while. With Bing imagery now available, older contributors also may 
start mapping again.

Regards,
Mike
OpenStreetMap Foundation Licence Working Group

[1] Based on node count, http://odbl.poole.ch/
[2] "Nodes Created", "Ways created or modified" 
http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/munin.html
[3] 
http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/?view=wtfe&lon=122.64844&lat=12.50523&zoom=6&opacity=0.77&overlays=overview,wtfe_point_clean,wtfe_line_clean,wtfe_point_harmless,wtfe_line_harmless,wtfe_point_modified,wtfe_line_modified_cp,wtfe_line_modified,wtfe_point_created,wtfe_line_created_cp,wtfe_line_created
[4] A guide to the License Change View on OSM Inspector 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Remapping/License_Change_View_on_OSM_Inspector