[OSM-talk] Yahoo Aerial Imagery vs. OSM Spirit

[Tom Chance]

Ahoy,

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:51:53 +0200, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> But gifts can also do damage. On the one hand, we risk becoming  
> influenced (or should I even sy corrupted) in or thinking by the very  
> "intellectual property/licensing/corporate attitude" that was one  
> reason to start OSM. Call it political decision-making or whatever -  
> the fact that their data is there and they have nothing against our  
> tracing OSM data from the satellite/aerial imagery, but they want to  
> tell us exactly that one way of doing it is ok and other way is not.

That's definitely a concern I share. Whilst I had a field day mapping landuse and woodlands around St Albans with JOSM (I really can't stand the applet) being told now that I can't for (apparently) no good reason really rubs me the wrong way. I'm in favour of enlarging citizens' creative and cultural freedoms, of giving people the opportunity to make and use maps without unecessary restrictions, and providing the means to make it easier.

But I do appreciate Robert's point about GNU using non-free software as a platform to create the first free software. If Yahoo! were to say: "go ahead with your plugins, use these pictures in any piece of software, just don't go stealing our maps" then I think I'd be fine with it. As it stands I don't think I'll stop using the applet, but I definitely dislike the direction it takes OSM in.

Regards,
Tom