[OSM-talk] POIs from wikipedia

[Richard Fairhurst]

Robin Paulson wrote:

> i'm slightly lost now, wondering how osm fits in to this. if wp users
> can do it (i assume their legat team has looked through it?), why not
> osm

I suspect the most likely explanation is that they simply don't  
realise it's not legal - I'd expect discussion on the page if they  
thought it was the case. And it's such a small part of Wikipedia that  
Google et al are hardly going to risk the bad press by going after  
them, whereas for us it's our raison d'etre.

There are a couple of possible alternative explanations (copyright of  
geodata under US law, GFDL licensing of each article individually so  
it doesn't form a database) but ignorance is the most likely.

cheers
Richard