[OSM-talk] Osmarender 5

[80n]

On 9/1/07, Tom Hughes <tom at compton.nu> wrote:
>
> In message <8fcd02310709010441y5356e997o18be09709484e22c at mail.gmail.com>
>           80n <80n80n at gmail.com > wrote:
>
> > On 9/1/07, David Earl <david at frankieandshadow.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Why do many of the street names in Oakham have "(C) persons name"
> > > against them? This rather spoils the map IMO.
> >
> >
> > It's an experiment, I'd like to hear people's opinions.
>
> As discussed on IRC the other night after it first appeared, the
> consensus seemed be that it was bogus.


Here are some of my thoughts on why showing the user name might actually be
a good thing:

1) Showing the author of the work against each street allows the ordinary
user of our maps know who actually created it.  This gives them some
valuable information that can help them decided whether or not to trust what
they see.  It's understandable than users will initially not be very
trusting of OSM maps.  Anything we can do to help them have confidence is
really really important.

2) Attributing the authors of each street directly on the map is a very
direct way of show appreciation to the person who did the surveying and data
entry.  People spend a lot of time and effort doing this - they deserve to
see their names in lights, they deserve as much appreciation as we can give
them.  This point is not about copyright it is about appreciation of the
effort they have made.

3) This point is about copyright.  We have a responsibility to provide
attribution. Our license *requires* us to, it is not optional.  There has
been much discussion about how to do this and most threads usually end with
a Godwin's Law style invocation of "its not practical to include a list of
10,000 names anyway".  This approach is relatively unobtrusive and *is*
practical.  If only the API actually provided them we could list all the
contributors for each way (my analysis shows that the average number of
authors for each way is about 1.02).

4) It makes the maps look really different from those provided by Google,
etc.  OSM is about "using maps in creative, productive or unexpected ways".
Its very easy to make a map that looks just the same as those provided by
Google - what's the value in that?  I see some value in being experimental,
standing out from the crowd, differentiating OSM maps from all the other
maps out there.  Like Juliska Glassware (
http://www.juliska.com/our-collections/product-care-info/) we can claim that
each street on our maps is individually signed by the author.  This is an
enormous claim of quality and something that I can't ever see Ordnance
Survey or TeleAtlas doing.

80n



To start with you can't possibly know if that is the correct copyright
> attribution, assuming that you've just taken the last person to edit
> it and ignore all previous editors who may well have far more work.
>
> It might even have been created by the Tiger upload or by somebody
> who has declared their work PD and therefore not be copyright at all.
>
> When you were first playing with it there was no copyright symbol was
> there? I think adding it was a big mistake as it makes an assertion
> that will frequently be wrong.
>
> Tom
>
> --
> Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
> http://www.compton.nu/
>
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