[Openstreetmap] Organizing the OSM community and funding a bit better (Was: no dots)

[Lars Aronsson]

Arnulf Christl wrote:

> All that we could host for a starter would be a boring VMAP 
> level 0. Sucks. We need living data and you can provide it.

Apart from the direct foundation/organization issues, I think 
there are two areas where you could provide valuable input:

1. What data formats and models would the OSGF community prefer 
for the OSM output?  So far I have only been creating OSM maps 
because it was fun to do, but I haven't yet seen anybody use them.
I think I need feedback from users to improve and focus my work.
What are the (non-free?) VMAP level 0 dataset that we could 
replace?  Where is it used?  Is this the new ESRI DCW?

2. What license (CC-NC or not) would the OSGF community prefer for 
the OSM output?

I assume many OSGF members/supporters using your software (GRASS, 
MapServer, etc.) together with proprietary datasets (e.g. British 
Ordnance Survey).  Are they in the dependency situation that Steve 
described, where they might be afraid to cooperate with people who 
are outspoken enemies of the Ordnance Survey monopoly?  Would they 
prefer that OSM adopt a lame NC license?

Or conversely, can we realistically enforce the ShareAlike 
component of the CC license to achive a viral/ripple/cascade 
effect similar to GPL, so that if the O.S. would use OSM map data 
they would have to release their own datasets under the same free 
license?  If we cannot enforce this, perhaps we should just as 
well release our map data into the public domain.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se