[Openstreetmap] Geowiki, OS Popular Series maps & exchanging large datasets

[Richard Fairhurst]

On 25 Apr 2005, at 13:13, Alex Willmer wrote:

> Richard, if you're reading, would it be possible to get hold of these
> maps. I presume upload via the internet is out of the question, but
> could we meet in the Oxford/Northamptonshire area or could I send you a
> harddrive in the post? If my understanding of copyright isn't fubar, I
> believe you hold copyright on these images in particular. What license
> would you prefer if you're happy to release them?

Happy to meet up - I'm in Charlbury, Oxfordshire (or 435860, 219900 if 
that's more precise (-: ).

On the copyright front: basically, I'm very happy for people to derive 
whatever they want from the maps. I get very cross when people who've 
produced facsimiles try to claim 100% copyright as if it were a modern 
map... so I'm not doing that.

What I would like to reserve is the use of the full collection of 
scans. Essentially, this is because I'd like to sell a CD or DVD 
version for a modest price (about £20 or so) to family historians, 
railway enthusiasts, etc. etc. But yes, I'm happy with pretty much any 
derived work, even to the extent of using the full map as a base-layer 
for an Internet mapping application.

> On geowiki itself: Wow! I'd no idea anyone had so much data, in 
> particular the attributtion. The rendering is also very clear. Is all 
> of that mapping manually captured and labelled? Was the point data 
> showing towns captured from the scanned Popular Series maps?

The Geowiki mapping comes from a handful of sources, principally:

- Most roads are GPS tracks gathered by me or my co-conspirators.
- The built-up areas and greyed-out roads are from VMAP0/DCW.
- The placenames are a small dataset I compiled many years ago, 
principally from historic data.

Everything was assembled and annotated with Adobe Illustrator, and 
rasterised from there. I will be starting again in due course when 
Geowiki goes fully vectorised, probably to be delivered through SWF via 
the marvellous Ming library... but at the moment I'm a bit too busy 
with the day job for that, sadly. Certainly my intention is to deliver 
the data to Openstreetmap and make Geowiki a client, in much the same 
way that Nick's doing with Freemap.

> I presume the geowiki data is what Richard was referring to, which he 
> said he won't release under CC with SA?

That's it, yes. (It's worth pointing out that not all of the Geowiki 
data is mine - a few others have gathered tracks and they probably have 
their own opinions.) CC-BY is of course a less restrictive licence than 
CC-BY-SA so it shouldn't actually hinder any products.

To explain my position on this a little...

I work as a freelance cartographer from time to time (generally, though 
not always, unpaid). Often this is for community groups 
(www.cotswoldcanals.com, www.castiron.org.uk), other times for my 
employer (currently British Waterways). All of these are organisations 
which, in my view, have more worthwhile things to do with their cash 
then spend it on map licensing fees.

These maps are based on GPS tracks and historical mapping. I know other 
people who want to use GPS tracks for similar projects - for example, 
the very capable cartographer who draws the maps for Hebridean ferry 
company Caledonian MacBrayne's timetables (Calmac is commercial, but 
certainly not profit-making, if you get my drift). I'd like her, and 
others like her, to be able to use my data. CC-BY-SA would prevent 
this.

I understand Frank's concern about not wanting big avaricious 
corporations to filch our data, but if it happened, I could probably 
live with this for a few reasons. Firstly, I'd rather that than see 
other causes shut off from using the data. Secondly, CC-BY requires 
prominent attribution, which would be good publicity for the free 
mapping movement. And finally, if the big guys start using our data, it 
might force national mapping agencies to open up their data in 
response... which has to be good.

cheers
Richard