[OSM-talk] [Announce] OSMF license change vote has started

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Morten Kjeldgaard wrote:
> Making those nodes and ways, the users employ
> their judgement and knowledge about the landscape, as in "I don't trust the
> the GPS track around here because of trees and tall buildings," or "I'll
> place a POI there because I know it's a pretty good pizza place. I'll look
> up the opening hours too."
> 
> I would argue that the latter is creative works and not under the category
> considered by the CC to be "data"?

This is a hotly debated issue. My personal take on this is: Our aim is 
to come as close as possible to reality with OSM. We have to make 
compromises but these are not by design - if there *was* a way to record 
the extent and location of a street and not die from information 
overload then we *would* do that.

We cannot do it because of technical limitations - we cannot measure 
everything that exactly, and even if we could, we couldn't store all the 
information, and even if we could, we couldn't process it.

So if OSM is anything other than pure facts, then this is not because we 
want OSM to be an artsy project and thus have introduced some degrees of 
freedom in how something can be mapped. It is purely because of 
technical shortcomings.

Any not-fact we have is, if you will, an inaccuracy that we would get 
rid of at the first opportunity.

Thus, it would strike me as odd to make a principle of this 
"non-factualness" of OSM and claim copyright on the creative aspect. OSM 
is, in my eyes, a data collection project and not a creative works project.

Bye
Frederik