[Talk-us-newyork] NYS Orthos imagery layer defunct?

[D. Joe]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 02:36:21PM -0400, Kevin Kenny wrote:
> 
> If you're a user of another editor (including iD), I think you'll have to wait
> for upstream to act on https://github.com/osmlab/editor-layer-index/pull/975 -
> I don't know whether it's possible to add a custom imagery layer in iD.

It looks like upstream is, in turn, waiting on multi-party discussions Richard Welty reports are ongoing as of Nov 3:

https://github.com/osmlab/editor-layer-index/pull/975#issuecomment-721336486

but that's the last thing that's publically available about it all.

In the meantime I've been watching the NYSGIS mailing list, a post to which I saw today reminded me that this remains unsettled. So, I've also been poking around state web pages that might be relevant.

It seems the state tends to see this in terms of "publishable" data within a framing of a bilateral contractual relationship between the state and any given downstream user, with less provision for the vagaries of passthrough licensing in uses like OSM.

A lot of what I'm seeing makes reference to Executive Order 95:

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/no-95-using-technology-promote-transparency-improve-government-performance-and-enhance-citizen

>From a hard-core free software perspective, navigating these sites is a nightmare tangle of surveillance capitalism technologies. Relevant texts are either not accessible by direct link or are haphazardly accessible by direct link, but instead require running Nth-party software of dubious provenance, downloaded on-the-fly both from the usual set of suspects (google.com, gstatic.com, ajax.googleapis.com) but also others (pendo.io whatever that is).

So, starting at https://data.ny.gov/ and accepting a sufficient number of the Nth party CSS, cookies, and JavaScript, one is presented with a link to access OpenDataProgramOverview.pdf

That PDF in turn *does* contain a useful link, to the New York State Open Data Handbook 

https://data.ny.gov/download/id8k-natf/application/pdf

one of the brighter spots in that document is a list of "questions to assist agencies in prioritizing publication of high value “publishable state data” consistent with Executive Order No. 95" which list includes:

> Could the data be useful for the creation of novel and useful third-party applications, mobile applications, and services? Software applications often leverage data from multiple sources to provide value to their customers. Making agency data sets available can support the delivery of greater value (and impact) through those applications.

That sounds a lot like OSM to me. Even so, this question bears on how to prioritize publishing, not on what kind of permissions or licensing to use.

That handbook, in turn, has a URL for a Terms of Use

https://data.ny.gov/download/77gx-ii52/application/pdf

but that is a circa 2013 version. 

Searching for a more recent version of "open ny terms of use" takes us back into the 'cloud services' thicket, to

https://data.ny.gov/dataset/OPEN-NY-Terms-Of-Use/77gx-ii52

This latter wrapper page claims something about that was updated June 10, 2019, but it serves the same Microsoft Word branded PDF which internally shows "LAST MODIFIED:  March 8, 2013  "

So, there are Terms, but given how convoluted and hedging they are, I despair at OSM agreeing to put their downstream users at their mercy and so I guess I'm thrown back on hoping something comes from all those discussions, such as they are, whatever they are.



-- 
Joe   On ceding power to tech companies: http://xkcd.com/1118/
man screen | grep -A2 weird
  A weird imagination is most useful to gain full advantage of
  all the features.