[Openstreetmap] The bigger picture

[Tom Carden]

On 2/14/06, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:
> Tom wrote:
>
> > On 2/14/06, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:
> >> And the third is that, by removing limitations on the ways in which
> >> OSM-derived maps can appear, we make it more likely that these maps
> >> will be produced.
> >
> > I think they'll get produced anyway, and if you loosen the
> > restrictions then you just encourage people to go off and do it alone
> > without feeding back into the project.  Rather the attempts to profit
> > from OSM be tightly coupled to the project than parasitically skimming
> > off the top of it.
>
> I'll give a real-life example.
>
> I'd like to produce a complete map of Britain's waterways for my day
> job, which
> is as editor of Waterways World magazine. The basic ingredient for this is the
> line data for all Britain's canals and rivers, and I'm working on that at
> present.
>
> If OSM's ShareAlike just applies to the geodata, then I could think about
> including OSM-sourced motorways as a faint background layer to this
> map. I then
> contribute all the canal/river line data back to OSM, as required by
> ShareAlike.
> OSM gets a free plug in 18,000 homes, and a nice load of new data, at least
> partly drawn in work time and donated by the company I work for.
>

Just to be clear, you're saying that under your proposed
geodata-specific license then if you used OSM's motorway data in your
waterways maps, you would be required to contribute the canal/river
line data back to OpenStreetMap?  That's not true.  You'd be required
to make your geodata available under the same license, but you
wouldn't be required to submit it to OSM.  And this is where it gets
tricky... you're not distributing geodata, you're distributing a map -
now your map has to come with source code ;)

> If OSM's ShareAlike applies to the entire finished map, though, I have
> to put a
> PDF up somewhere, and licence that as ShareAlike.

That's not true either.  You just have to allow people to
copy/distribute/modify your map, from whatever format you distribute
it in, to other formats, and to allow derivative works under the same
license.  So I could scan your map, add my favourite canal-side pubs,
and then put that map on my website, so long as I maintained the
license.  Where does it say that if you produce a print work from a CC
licensed source, you have to make a digital version available?

> This means, next month, I'll
> see it appear in the other competing magazines. I really can't see my boss
> going for that.
>

Why not?  You had it a month early, and you have the digital copy and
can easily keep it up to date.

> So OSM doesn't get the data. Instead, I either buy the motorways from Ordnance
> Survey, or just forget about them totally.
>
> In other words, blanket application of ShareAlike makes it _harder_ for
> commercial companies to contribute to the project.
>

A blanket misinterpretation of your obligations under cc sharealike
certainly does do that :)

> You said earlier on:
>
> > Again, this doesn't prohibit people from selling their
> > data, just requires them to distribute it under the same terms as the
> > OSM data they derived it from.  That sounds totally fair to me - OSM
> > gets the benefit too since the derived works could go back into the
> > main database.
>
> But you can't feed PDFs, Illustrator files, paper maps or websites back
> into the
> OSM database... or am I missing your point? (likewise, that's not a rhetorical
> question, it's genuine puzzlement)
>

Not yet, and that's something to ponder, but there's no reason why
they couldn't at least be included as raster layers like
out-of-copyright maps hopefully will be and like landsat currently is.

Tom.