[OSM-talk] Frederik declares war on data imports...

[80n]

On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> John,
>
>
> On 08/08/2010 11:38 AM, John Smith wrote:
>
>> Basically those in favour of PD but not directly effected by or
>> benefiting from data imports would like to have them all ripped out
>> and replaced with surveyed data.
>>
>
> It's nothing to do with PD. It's that I'm sick and tired of hearing we
> cannot go ahead with ODbL because someone in Australia imported some
> coastline.
>
> Frederik, it's not just Australian data.  Many people have happily imported
CC-BY-SA licensed data over the past several years.  This is all going to go
along with the contributions of many major individuals, all those who no
longer contribute or can't be contacted and, of course, those who can't be
bothered.

The sad thing is that despite three years of seriously hard work on creating
a new license nobody has bothered to find out whether the change would
actually be feasible.

There's likely to be 20% data loss based on the feedback I'm getting. Have
you got a feel for the likely amount of data loss in Germany?  I don't have
any visibility of the sentiment or German contributors but I suspect that
you do.



> There are many places in the world where we have the "second-best" data in
> OSM because the best available data is not under a suitable license. That's
> accepted, we're making do with that, it even encourages us.
>
> Now for the last half year I've had to listen to two or three people from
> Australia whining about the proposed move to ODbL not being possible because
> they have imported coastline. But in my eyes that's not at all different to
> any other situation regarding license - if the coastline turns out to be
> incompatible with the license we want to use, then we have to use another
> data source.
>
> I don't see any reason for an outcry other than this might make the
> coastline less precise for a while. Chances are it is going to be fixed very
> quickly in areas with Yahoo imagery, and might retain some of the typical
> "blockiness" of the PGS import in wilderness areas. But honestly - if *that*
> is something that holds us back from doing the license change then maybe we
> should simply switch off the servers.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
>
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