[Talk-us] What's protecting the map?

[Ian Dees]

On Sun, Jun 9, 2019, 15:38 Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2019 at 1:23 PM Nuno Caldeira <nunocapelocaldeira at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> But what happens if the Foundation is taken over by people with
>> commercial interests?
>>
>>    - You still own the rights to any data you contribute, not the
>>    Foundation. In the new Contributor Terms, you license the Foundation to
>>    publish the data for others to use and ONLY under a free and open license
>>
>>
> This got me thinking, particularly considering the license change a few
> years ago and what a fiasco that was.  What's protecting the map here?
> What's to stop a prolific contributor from taking their ball and going
> home, to the overall detriment of the map?
>
> To be clear, this *is not something I am going to to*.  For the sake of
> playing Devil's advocate, what is to stop me from, after nearly a decade,
> taking my data and going home?  This would leave a roughly 400 kilometer
> wide hole centered in Tulsa, some serious breakage in metro Portland and
> thousands of pockmarks around the world.  If I were to pull out and take my
> data with me, it would swiss cheese the map.
>

What does "taking my data and going home" mean? You've already given OSMF a
license to use the data you've contributed so far, so there wouldn't be any
reason for OSMF to remove the data from a legal perspective. I suppose you
could go around and delete the data you've contributed, but that would
likely be considered vandalism and your changes reverted.

>
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