[OSM-talk] open data

[Andy Robinson]

Robert Hart [mailto:Robert.Hart at BuroHappold.com] wrote:
>Sent: 21 September 2006 1:08 PM
>To: Andy Robinson; Robert Hart; talk at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: RE: [OSM-talk] open data
>
>> 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.

The page is a bit hidden away at
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Foundation
More a reflection of a legacy organisational format than anything else.


>
>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.
>

I think we (OSM that is) is doing just that now. There is plenty of
discussion on map feature tagging and ways of standardising some aspects for
navigational use for instance. But that just helps us do a certain task.
What we don’t want is a set of rules that says you must tag for mapping
using map_features when contributing data. That in my view would be counter
productive and halt creativity. I certainly wouldn’t want a beast of an ISO
standard or GML specification hanging over my method of contributing.

Cheers

Andy

>Rob
>
>
>
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