[Openstreetmap] Re: money and what to do about it

SteveC steve at fractalus.com
Fri Mar 18 01:22:12 GMT 2005


* @ 18/03/05 12:26:48 AM jo at frot.org wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 17, 2005 at 11:51:02PM +0000, SteveC wrote:
> > Of course, its your money to do with as you like but the project manager
> > inside me (there's one in everyone!) would ask questions, like:
> 
> i wouldn't think of it as being 'our' money. it is potential money
> that saul, schuyler and i have been agentsin encouraging to exist.
> a bit is pledges from people and list members, and i certainly
> wouldn't want to proceed without gathering and acting on opinion and
> consensus on this list as to the maximum benefit possible.

eeek - When saying 'your' I really meant, 'not mine to decide what to do
with, so dont shoot me for my views'. Or something. :-)

>   
> > Is there a proof of concept to actually use the data? (I havn't seen one
> > (yet!) that anywhere near approaches taking an image and getting vectors
> > out, even one where people can draw on top of the image).
> 
> i have done a very simple unfinished proof-of-concept with mapserver
> http://uo.space.frot.org/freemap/draw.cgi

Ok, so if its the draw-on-top route then you're - we're - safe design
wise.

IP wise, whats to stop me reconstructing the image from mapserver tiles
and selling it in competition with $satellite_reseller? Or, giving it
away free hence lowering the market value of their product? Unless they
have extremely liberal license here, or they really want to view the
person scraping as the infringer... there could be problems?

> it is no great shakes, and the drawing is a little inexact but the
> idea is there. i had to stop working on it and do remumerating things,
> but these are also thankfully mapserver related so i would aspire to
> have something more "real" like this, where you can construct lines
> and polygons and annotate them with types and properties and so on...

Have you looked at the coordinate transform between the image and
lat/lon? Has anyone grabbed a satellite image and tried mapping it to an
OS map? What does the transform look like? Whats the error on the
transform?

I'm flipping between thinking its really easy or really hard to do
properly. It depends a lot on the image scale and what kind of
topography its looking at. 'Course maybe the image comes with coordinate
overlays or other useful data.

> Yes, we should really really acquire a small data sample to try out
> feature extraction from. I think the aerial/sat photos would be a great 
> source even for tracing maps and identifying and classifying all kinds
> of different features, picking out buildings and green space etc.
> But we can't buy ikonos data for less than a minimum spatial sample
> that would set us back about 700 pounds. Where can we get a chunk of
> 1m / comparable aerial photography to experiment with?

As a proof, just steal it from somewhere.

> I think a pool of hardware would be a great thing. especially if we
> agree where it should be distributed, there are cyclist groups in
> tower hamlets and in southwark who have done pothole reporting
> projects and would probably be into a mass map-collection exercise
> especially with a friendly competition aspect. A GPS pool could
> provide for week-long exercises. We could get bike mounts.

That would be extremely cool!

have fun,

SteveC steve at fractalus.com http://www.fractalus.com/steve/




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