[Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[stevea]

>In system management, success is reaching the 
>next bottle neck.  My take away from Alex's 
>concern is "What is the next bottle neck for OSM 
>to focus on?"  We can already see some of the 
>great successes that MapBox has created from the 
>ideas used to make a slippy map.  I am so 
>thankful for the whole idea of mbtiles.  What a 
>wonderful idea.  I am so thankful for TileMill. 
> I show people TillMill and how they can use it 
>to get into GIS with a limited budget. These 
>people can save a ton of cash and learn the same 
>important concepts behind GIS without more 
>expensive tools.  However, I don't believe that 
>the license is the next bottleneck.  The next 
>bottleneck to face is something more like 
>creating the iD editor.

I understand the Gift Culture.  I've been to 
Burning Man a dozen times.  OK, more or less:  it 
might be eleven, it might be thirteen or 
fourteen.  I have just barely lost count, so it 
is somewhere between 11 and 14 (starting in 1995, 
when there were only "hundreds" or "low 
thousands" there, not the tens of thousands I've 
seen in past years).  Yet still:  the Gift 
Culture is real.

>I've just described the gift culture of the open 
>source/data world. My dentist doesn't get it. 
> He thinks that I should make as much money as I 
>can.  Why are you giving this away?  MapBox has 
>gifted us some great things.  Part of my gift 
>back is to use a project or tell other people 
>about these gifts.  Corporations don't always 
>get this idea.  We can look to the recent 
>example of Oracle Corporation and the 
>Jenkins/Hudson controversy.  In short, Oracle 
>wanted to take complete control of the open 
>source Hudson project.  The rift was so bad that 
>Jenkins was forked out of Hudson so that the 
>project could continue.   In a perfect world, 
>I'd say Alex, let's change the license so that 
>we can share things better with one another. 
> However, I can't.  Others don't understand that 
>gift culture like you and I do.  From all bad 
>things that I've seen, I wouldn't license the 
>data under any other license than ODbl.

My experience with OSM for nearly five years has 
been largely my ".org side" of giving back as a 
volunteer.  Sometimes it potentially strays into 
the ".com realm," as I do run a software 
consultancy that charges by the hour.  I haven't 
yet billed for hours yet for any OSM work, but I 
don't rule it out in the future.  The Gift 
Culture and volunteering blurs a bit with my .org 
and .com worlds.  I suspect there are others for 
whom this is true as well.

>ODbl isn't the only license that causes legal heartburn.

There is a liquid boundary right now going on. 
Part of it is because of differences in Europe 
and USA, part of it is cultural, as in "freedom" 
(of Information Act at a federal level, Public 
Record Acts making for "green pastures" regarding 
data openness), part of it is corporate as in 
"what the courts have said and are likely TO 
say...".

<redacted>
Greg addresses heady issues which are not germane 
to my responses, so I hereby duck out of this 
thread.

>Next problem with this ideal is that OSM cannot 
>guarantee the integrity of the data once it has 
>been placed into the OSM database.  I started to 
>map pedestrian crossings. I am OK that a 
>crossing is not rendered at this time because I 
>use a node for a crossing, a node for a traffic 
>light, and another crossing node to help line up 
>intersections.  I also thought that it would be 
>a great way to sell governments on the use of 
>this kind-of data to maintain their annual 
>restriping of crosswalks.  A new mapper comes 
>along and starts deleting the crossing data 
>because cartographers have not rendered the 
>data.  The data were/are considered map clutter. 
> I guess the reason is that if I cannot see the 
>data rendered, then why do I have to plow 
>through it in an editor?

I will say that iD allows very entry-level 
editors to make significant contributions 
(witness the University of California Santa Cruz 
students of CMPE 80A who enter 
mobility/handicapped data like tactile_paving and 
crosswalks and bus_stop data).  While the editor 
might largely contribute to them "getting this 
wrong," it isn't hard (but it is a bit of work) 
to "clean up" these data.  So, it's a step in the 
right direction for early users to use iD, 
especially if they make "sloppy" errors, but the 
data they enter are important and valuable.

I agree with Greg's characterization that it is 
important to get contributions (even if slightly 
"goofed") which can be "cleaned up" or 
"harmonized" later.  See, "getting data in" is 
important, and "getting data in right" is 
important.  Both don't need to happen at the same 
time (though it is good if they do), as "cleanup" 
can happen.  In fact, it is valuable as it does, 
even as a two-step process.

What Greg says about ugly tiles reminds me of 
osmaender (sp?) from circa 2011.  That was an 
ugly renderer in many cases, but showed tagging 
at a "ragged" level.  Maybe we can get to 
something like that again.

>Vector tiles are not the solution if the 
>resulting tiles are the just more of the same 
>minimalist map tiles.  We need a real mapper's 
>map again.  We need tiles that are so butt ugly 
>only a mother would hang the project tiles on 
>her fridge because that's what little Johnny did 
>in school today.  The type of butt ugly tiles I 
>am talking about are something like Tiles at Home, 
><http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tiles@Home>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tiles@Home. 
> The magic of T at H was that I was rewarded as a 
>young mapper.  It was magic when I saw the first 
>traffic=hump that I added to the database show 
>up on the map.  From there, it was an Easter egg 
>hunt to find traffic calming humps as I could 
>while I fixed tiger data.

Touché, Greg.  That is a very useful toolchain.

>A license change is not what OSM needs.  The 
>Linux project held firm to their license even 
>though businesses complained.  Corporations are 
>contributing to the project now.  Even Microsoft 
>has contributed to the kernel after years of 
>calling the GPL a cancer.  OSM needs to hold 
>firm to the license that we have.  As people 
>have pointed out a permissive license would 
>allow companies to just sweep the OSM data into 
>their database without gifting back.  I've spent 
>a great deal of my resources in the way of 
>enjoyable time exploring and mapping my part of 
>the world.  That has been my gift to the project 
>and fellow mappers.  Businesses need to figure 
>out how to join in and what they can regift to 
>the project.  If they can't, then there are 
>always other paid alternatives to OSM data. 
> They have to weight the perceived cost of 
>giving up data verses the cost of paying a 
>service provider like Google to keep their IP.

Yup.  Simply said:  yup.

>I hope this helps,

It does, Greg.  Thank you.

SteveA
California
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