[OSM-talk] open data

[Robert Hart]

> We shouldn't over extend the assumptions here. What we need to address now
> is the licence issue with respect to the contribution and use of the data
> OSM maintains.
> 
> The aims of the project are quite clear and I'll quote from the Foundation
> objectives that:
> "The OpenStreetMap Foundation is an international non-profit organisation
> dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free
> geospatial data and to providing geospatial data for anybody to use and
> share."
> Which to me basically means that it's unlikely ever to enforce many rules
> or
> standards on what the format of that data actually is beyond the
> node/seg/way/area/tag receptacles. Thus I see Map Features or any other
> categorisation or "standard" beyond the basic structure of the data as a
> plug in feature to OSM rather than incorporated within it.

That's interesting. I haven't seen the foundation objectives before... I
shall dig a bit deeper into the wiki. 

Personally, I'd have thought that both "...encouraging the growth,
development and distribution..." and "...providing geospatial data for
anybody to use...", are objectives that are easier to obtain when there is a
widely used convention about how that data is represented? 

I'm not saying that a specific representation be enforced as such, but I
fail to see how OSM can remain manageable and useful without at least some
consensus and/or leadership on the matter.

Rob



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