[OSM-talk] [OSM-legal-talk] Are we strict enough with imports ?

Philip Homburg pch-osm-talk at u-1.phicoh.com
Thu Feb 11 17:55:36 GMT 2010


In your letter dated Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:24:12 +0100 you wrote:
>In all other cases it would be *much* more desirable to establish better 
>mechanisms of merging OSM data with that other data in preparation for 
>map drawing etc., rather than pulling it all in and having it rot.
>
>I would very much like to develop a kind of "litmus test" for imports, 
>and get the message across that not every import is a good import (even 
>if legally spotless). Today, even newcomers to OSM sometimes seem 
>hell-bent on importing large quantities of data just because they can. I 
>would like to remind people that OSM has a very lively culture of 
>surveying data - and I'd rather have 1 sq km surveyed by a newbie than 
>100 sq km imported.

I think the 'spirit of OSM' is the other way around: if importing a dataset
is harmful to the project then don't do it. 

Assuming data is properly imported (i.e. a new user created just for that
import), then deleting or ignoring that data is always an option. So 
people who want to link OSM to another database can just do that.

Of course, you can't import data is it isn't legal to do so.

If an import makes life a lot harder for other mappers in the area, then 
a good discussion is required about the merits of the import.

But otherwise, finding an outdated import in OSM may even create awareness 
that a certain dataset exists and is freely available.

For example I don't particularly like the import of the Dutch GSM antenna
locations (mostly because the josm verifier falls over the duplicate nodes),
but it is fun to see them on the map, and I never thought that that info
would be freely available.






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