[OSM-talk] Wikipedia POI import?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Thomas Wood wrote:
> Unverified and somewhat copyrightable sources.

While I'm not the greatest fan of Wikipedia myself, I think that we 
should stop perpetuating such unjustified and unfair criticism.

Like us, Wikipedia relies on a large user base, and they do a lot to 
educate these users about copyright. Their sources are no less 
"verified" than ours. They take a different stance on deriving data from 
  Google et al., but this is just a different interpretation of existing 
law than the one we apply. Wikipedia is not encouraging copyright 
violation, they have just mapped out a different course through what is 
a grey and murky area.

Our approach is more cautious than Wikipedia's, but that does not make 
us "better" or "cleaner", and it would do us all good to respect 
Wikipedians' decisions in their realm instead of telling everyone how 
they are basically pirates.

> Where's ShakespeareFan00 when you need him? :)

That poor guy has been told by some self-important OSMers that Wikimapia 
was an unacceptable source, and they somehow forgot to say that this is 
just the OSM interpretation. SFan00 dutifully started removing Wikimapia 
references from Wikipedia ("they're unacceptable, you know"), and ended 
up on the receiving end of a lot of justified Wikipedians' anger.

Please: Wikimapia, or even Wikipedia or OpenAerialMap may be on the 
other side of *our* definition of acceptable, but that does not make 
them any less free, or make them second-rate projects. It is time to 
bury that childish "but we are cleaner than you" rivalry.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"