[OSM-talk] www.geonames.org considered harmful

[Gabriel Ebner]

Recently nodes have popped up here in Austria with data from
www.geonames.org.  However, as far as I understand it, data from
www.geonames.org could be derived from Google Maps (they're used as a
background layer in an AJAX-y mashup where you can move nodes to fit the
satellite imagery).

If you want to import such data into OSM, please consider using the original
public domain data from http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/cntry_files.html

The nodes I have encountered so far correspond to this public domain source,
so there shouldn't be any problems so far.  But beware: any data from
www.geonames.org might have been modified using Google imagery and
importing it into OSM might therefore constitute copyright violation.

        Gabriel.