[Talk-us] Community Involvement

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 8:16 PM, Toby Murray <toby.murray at gmail.com> wrote:
> My thoughts about OSM US:
>
> I don't know if you will have resources for this but it would be nice
> to have some legally authoritative information when dealing with
> potential government data sources. Since copyright laws vary by
> country this seems like a good thing for a national chapter to deal
> with.
>
> Maybe even at the state level. I found out (by asking) that the Kansas
> DoT considers all the maps on their website to be in the public domain
> so they are all usable in OSM. Is this the case in other states?

Generally, no. It depends on the state, and sometimes it depends on the county.

Some are very willing to give the data, other feel the data is
completely proprietary. Some have large feees associated with getting
access to the data, and some have restrictions on derived works.

One of the goals of the chapter is collect this data and work with
governments (and other organizations) who wish to make their data
available to OSM.

> I'm
> not suggesting that OSM US start trying to contact state government
> divisions in all 50 states but perhaps there could be some suggestions
> on how to initiate contact with a government agency.  What about the
> impact of the Santa Clara county lawsuit back in 2009? Are there any
> parts of that decision that could be used as a precedent in other
> jurisdictions? My county is pretty awesome in that they gave me
> permission to use their 6" aerial imagery for tracing but when I asked
> the county next door, I was told that they charge for all their GIS
> data, end of story.

So, even charging isn't an awful thing, if the rest of the license is
OK. One county near me said their data is available, but we have to
pay $100 per DVD.

Again, yes, the national chapter should be able to help with that in
the future, either by evaluating the license and ensuring it's
acceptable or by creating an agreement by which they donate the data
to OSM explicitly. Then we can use it however we like.

And for that, I think having an organization which can legally
represent OpenStreetMap is valuable.

> It is great that we can use any tags we want. But at the same time,
> some consistency is absolutely necessary to be able to actually use
> the data in a global environment. Why do we all use highway=* tags for
> roads? That wouldn't be my first impulse, for most city roads at
> least, but we do it for consistency.

The tagging is fairly consistent and there's a procedure for votes to
be formally accepted. The WIki contains tags, and usually mentions if
there's been a formal acceptance of the proposal or not.

In the end, the way that a tag illustrates that it's formally accepted
by the community is if that tag is rendered.

> However also as a new mapper I have found it
> difficult to figure out how to map some relatively simple things
> "correctly." Sometimes there is nothing but a stub page on the wiki,
> sometimes there are 2 or 3 competing proposals, all of which have been
> idle for over a year. Several times this has led me to just "tag for
> the renderer" since that was the most authoritative source available.
> I have seen the same thing happening with other new mappers.

What features specifically have you had trouble with?

> I firmly believe that a lot of the time "people use different tags as
> they see fit and that's the way it should be" should really be "people
> use different tags because they weren't able to easily figure out how
> other people have tagged this feature." Coming up with a set of
> guidelines would be much more appreciated and less looked upon as
> "restricting" as some people seem to think. Look at the discussion
> happening in the mapquest thread about state highways. No one is
> saying "IT SHOULD BE DONE THIS WAY!" but rather "it would be nice to
> have consensus"

The wiki is supposed to be that. I've generally found (with  very few
exceptions) that everything I needed to map was already addressed on
the wiki.

But I accept what you're saying- that it's too hard to navigate the
wiki. You've identified a problem (and it appears others have had the
same problem)- now it's time to take it to the next step and create a
solution.

- Serge