[OSM-talk] Re: [OSM-dev] MassGIS dataset

Lars Aronsson lars at aronsson.se
Sat Jun 3 14:57:01 BST 2006


Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 03, 2006 at 06:02:16AM +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > European governments are more shrewd and skilled in how to 
> > make money off of their subjects than the amateur U.S. 
> > government(s).
> 
> Or perhaps because the US Government, at one point in time, 
> realized this was not a good idea. I think most people agree 
> that charging the taxpayer to get data collected using their tax 
> money is irresponsible -- so you're claiming that the European 
> governments are irresponsible?

Please avoid any political discussion.  I just wanted to point out 
that for every opinion or theory (European governments overtax 
their subjects) there is an alternative way of seeing things 
(European leaders would make good telephone company managers, 
because they know how to maintain profit-making monopolies).
If the poor man "owes his soul to the company store", that could 
actually be something good for the company store.  Obviously, if I 
put this much energy into OSM, I'm not running the company store.

> I agree that the primary target of OSM should be places where no 
> free geodata exists. But acting as a way to store, improve, 
> export, and make access to accurate geodata is extremely 
> important too,

I'm just a bit worried about the export part.  Will we be able to 
reassemble these edited line segments back into something useful? 
When will we see a proof-of-concept of the whole cycle: 
import-edit-export-use?  Could you load a tiny fraction of the 
MassGIS data into OSM, edit it, reexport it, and use it instead of 
the original MassGIS data?  It could make a nice conference 
presentation.


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




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