[OSM-talk] geonames considered harmful

[Tom Carden]

On 21/08/06, Mikel Maron <mikel_maron at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is that really necessary? I'm well aware that we want to remove any appearance of using licensed data. But in this case, the geonames data is not directly used in creating any OSM data, only as an aid to find cities.
>

I'm with Mikel on this.  You're cutting off your geonose to spite your
OpenFaceMap.

Just because geonames places might have been entered with Google Maps,
and therefore the license of the data is questionable, doesn't mean
that we can't use it on openstreetmap.org.  It just means we shouldn't
distribute it under CC or display data from it on a map we want to
distribute under CC.

T.