[OSM-talk] Not-properly-Open-but-called-Open

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

    first of all, I wasn't intending this to become an opencyclemap 
bashing thread. I wasn't even aware that there is something non-open 
about opencyclemap; I was prompted by your quote of openmtbmap. I didn't 
have a hidden agenda -

I'm not saying we should try to shame non-open solutions into 
submission. There are good and valid reasons for people to do things 
non-open.

Your argument about flash players and JVMs leads nowhere; I am not 
talking about openness of the target infrastructure but openness of the 
process. If I let you see and use all aspects of my work but you still 
need to buy a processor from Intel in order to practically use my work, 
that does not make my work less open.

Maybe instead of trying to define what counts as open, we could more 
easily say what is not open. If someone gives me a map rendered from 
OSM, but doesn't give me the style sheets or rule files or whatever so 
that I can see how he arrived at this map, then that map is most 
certainly not open. The process is secret. The map maker has maybe spent 
a lot of time figuring things out, and enjoys writing books or speaking 
at conferences about the cool aspects of his map that others cannot yet 
match, or tries to sell his consulting expertise. And it is his right to 
do so; and you are right in saying that in many cases such a non-open 
map will benefit the project more than no map at all. But that doesn't 
change the fact that the map is not open, and that others in the project 
who want to compete with that map will have to go through the same 
learning curve again instead of being offered the chance to "stand on 
the shoulders of giants".

> But, hey, maybe fundamentalism is the in thing for 2010.

I wonder why you seem so fundamentally opposed to what I'm saying. The 
OSM mission statement contains the idea of "[using geodata] in creative, 
productive, or unexpected ways". There can be no doubt that someone who 
makes his stylesheet and processes available for others to build on acts 
in this spirit.

It seems that my suggestion has conjured up images of some kind of 
"openness police" that will hunt down anyone who does something 
non-open, together with a mega-infectuous share-alike license that says 
that the second you even look at anything to do with OSM you have to 
upload your brain & hard disk to Richard Stallman. (Or should that now 
be Jordan ;-)

I assure you that this is not the case. As you know, I'm a PD advocate. 
Software I write, and data I contribute, is usually PD. As such, I tend 
to rely more on community norms and less on legal stuff: I make my 
things available for everyone, and I welcome it if others do the same. I 
will not hate someone who does not make his things available like I do, 
but I will probably be more willing to help a fellow free software 
author than someone who does proprietary stuff.

All I'm trying to do is introduce proper labeling - what is open and 
what isn't - and create a little incentive for people to share the cool 
stuff they do with OSM. An incentive - not a rule. Sharing something is 
often more than just uploading it to SVN. You have to put in a bit of 
documentation, remove that commented-out code over there, polish the 
whole thing a little bit for its public appearance. Maybe even remove 
the "drats, I  don't know what this option does but it doesn't work 
without" comments as they make you look silly ;-) That is extra work - 
work you don't have to do if you keep your stuff secret. All I want is 
to give people something in return - something like "you get a silver 
star if you make a cool OSM-based application, and you get a gold star 
if you share it".

I think it is good and right to make this distinction. I don't feel that 
this warrants the "fundamentalism" battle cry. Maybe some won't buy food 
labeled "organic" and others won't buy food not labeled so; but that 
doesn't make proper labeling fundamentalistic. Proper labeling is just that!

As someone else pointed out, it is sometimes quite difficult to find out 
exactly how open something is. If everyone who announced some cool new 
OSM map or OSM editor or OSM web site could be encouraged to specify 
exactly which bits of his application are open and which aren't, that 
would make many things easier.

The Garmin map page that Ulf mentioned, where you have a green/red 
"source available" column, is very much what I was thinking of - maybe 
green/red is too harsh and it should indeed be gold/silver, but the 
table overall does not create the impression that the non-open stuff is 
somehow despicable. If something like that could be made a habit in OSM 
- call a spade a spade, and say where something is open and where it has 
little black boxes full of secrets, that would go a long way to making 
me happy in this respect.

(I'll review mentionings of Geofabrik services on the Wiki and amend 
them accordingly.)

Bye
Frederik

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