[OSM-talk] roundabouts, dev-nodes and copyright

[Andy Robinson]

Florian Loitsch wrote: 
>Sent: 08 February 2007 11:02 AM
>To: talk at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: [OSM-talk] roundabouts, dev-nodes and copyright
>
>hi,
>three questions:
>- when roundabouts have names, should I use the name-tag of the way, or
>should
>I add another node to mark the location (or even an area-node)?
>Currently the renderers put the name on the road where it's nearly
>impossible
>to read (too curved). Personally I vote for putting the name into the
>name-tag, but change the renderers, but that's just my opinion.

You could do both and then a rendering decision can be made. When zoomed
right in then the name might be perfectly ok on the way itself.
To avoid loosing the node for some reason I would suggest tagging one of the
nodes with the name. A renderer can always displace the position of the text
to get it to look right.

>- Is there a convention how to mark "developer" nodes? I want to add some
>information so that somebody working on the same area could benefit from my
>information (in particular I have made photos of road-signs, and the next
>person could use these to label the roads). I would like to add nodes, and
>write into a "dev-information" tag my information. (JOSM... could even
>display these nodes differently).

There is not really a convention on this as such. Probably the best advice
is to tag the last part of completed way plus any extending nodes with the
"note" tag. If you have some specific source information you can also use
one of the annotation tags. There is also nothing stopping you creating a
new tag which you think serves the purpose better.

>- This question has been probably already asked, and in this case just
>ignore
>it, or point me into the correct direction: AFAIK one cannot copyright the
>names... themselves. When taking several different maps, and use the
>complete
>set to "extract" the names (data) out of them, am I still not allowed to
>use
>these names to label my streets?

It is an OSM rule not to acquire any data from an in-copyright map, and that
includes names. Yes, there are those that believe data that is fact is not
subject to copyright in the same way but we are not in the position to be
able to defend against someone suggesting we have infringed copyright by
deriving information. The problem occurs when you copy names which you have
no way of knowing are correct or not. The map might not be correct or be
deliberately false. Therefore stick to out-of-copyright sources or your own
surveying.


>mfg,
>// florian
>
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