[OSM-talk] Wikimapia

Ciprian Talaba cipriantalaba at gmail.com
Wed Nov 18 20:16:16 GMT 2009


Hi Matthew,

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 9:48 PM, Matthew Luehrmann <
matthew.luehrmann at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wikimapia at: http://wikimapia.org/wiki/Main_Page seems to have the same
> mission as OSM.  Has anyone contacted them to talk about merging the two
> projects so that we can both accomplish more?  They definitely have better
> usability and explain how to contribute better.  They also seem to have
> permission to display their data with Google's aerial imagery and trace
> from
> Google imagery.
>
> Cheers,
> Matthew
>
>
Unfortunately I don't see that Wikimapia has the same mission as OSM. They
might advertise this on the site, but it is not true. After reading their
Terms of Service (http://wikimapia.org/terms_reference.html) looks like you
can use the data only for non-commercial purposes:

"F. *All User Submissions of all users and all WikiMapia data are available
through WikiMapia website, WikiMapia API and other current or future
WikiMapia services for  non-commercial* *purposes only: **personal or
educational*" (the highlight is from the original document).

OSM is about freedom all the way, not about freedom as Google or others
understood it.

About the permission to display and trace from Google imagery, I doubt they
had any contact with Google, they just don't care. Why Google is not
actively working to make sure that their Terms of Service are respected is
still a mystery for many people.

Sorry if this response seems a little bit too harsh, but I am really tired
to see companies/people that say "Look how many things you get free from
us!", while actually this is not true.

Regards,
--Ciprian
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