[OSM-talk] Abnormal votings on military objects in RU wiki part; PocketGIS madness

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 14:17, Kirill Bestoujev <bestoujev at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/4/11 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com>
>>
>> It's useful to check out some of the lengths Wikipedia (especially
>> local language editions) go to to bend over backwards for national
>> law.
>
> Wikipedia is not a good example - the geo-information is much more specific
> and under greater restrictions...

There are differences but they're ultimately they same. Both are
global projects recording factual data about the world. Wikipedia has
already been blocked numerous times in China as a result It could work
around it by creating a censored version but this has been deemed
contrary to the core values of the project.

> We are trying to find a way through our legislation and the position  of out
> authorities. We are not even sure we will succeed, but with thees military
> objects (which some of Russian mapper keep mapping just right now, stupidly
> copy-pasting data from Wikimapia - so no personal check of data, no trough
> on ground) we will surely fail!

Anything being blindly copied from Wikimapia without permission should
be deleted. Wikimapia's license isn't compatible with ours.

> There are to projects, one already launched and one bing prepared, similar
> to OSM, but both sponsored by big companies -one by Yandex (our Russian
> biggest search engine, could say local Google) the other - by on of the
> leading Russain navigation software companies. The do know very well that
> OSM is a threat to them! And they will use any chance to stop that threat.
> On letter to state authorities - and we will loose the possibility to
> legally use OSM. They can do nothing to OSM itself, but we are not in
> England, we are here, in Russia.

I appreciate the predicament and as I pointed out it may very well be
that removing landuse=military from Russia is the least worst option
for everyone involved.