[OSM-talk] open data

[Tom Chance]

On Thursday 21 September 2006 10:09, Nick Burch wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Tom Chance wrote:
> > As Etienne said, OSM is going great guns now and I see no need to cede
> > the data to the public domain just because we can't do nice recycling
> > facility maps yet
>
> Currently, for recyclenow.com, they license the list of recycling
> locations from a company called Valpak (valpak.co.uk). recyclenow.com
> doesn't own the list of recycling locations, so they can't release it
> under the same licence as OSM.
>
> So, their options are:
> 1) Licence a bunch of recycling data from valpak
> 2) Lay it on top of google maps
> 3) Help people recycle
>
> or:
> 1) Licence a bunch of recycling data from valpak
> 2) Not be able to lay it on top of OSM maps, as they can't give away the
>      valpak data that isn't theirs
> 3) ??????
>
> Does anyone see the snag here?

Yes, you've missed a third option:

1) Collaborate with OSM and others to get good coverage of recycling 
facilities. I'm already doing this in Reading. In fact, OSM has the only map 
of recycling points on the Whiteknights university campus that I know of :)
2) Produce customised OSM maps highlighting the recycling points.
3) Help people recycle, and allow people to contribute to the resource, use 
the data in their own interesting ways, etc.

Why do you think the basic map data should be free of nasty licensing 
restrictions, but not the recycling point data?

IMO we should aim for a future where this can be done in partnership with 
national green groups, councils, recycling companies, etc. rather than 
relying on proprietary data from someone like Valpak.

Free software inevitably makes certain jobs redundant, and others more 
valuable. We shouldn't hesitate just because certain business models cease to 
be viable, nor because we are unable to run Adobe Photoshop on Linux. So long 
as the BY-SA license supports enough volunteers and business models to get 
the data into the database, and out in all the forms people would like, I'm 
not too worried about particular companies or web sites having problems with 
the OSM license in the next year or two. We should concentrate on improving 
the project and developing business models based around it, rather than 
developing our ideals around current business models.

I *definitely* don't want to see a license fork, that would cut OSM off from 
everyone using BY-SA for their other work. License proliferation 
for "content" is a very stupid idea indeed.

Anyway, I believe that a change in license would be impossible without 
contacting every single contributor, so I assume this discussion is rather 
pointless :o)

Regards,
Tom

Regards,
Tom

-- 
The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting
 - Kundera