[OSM-talk] [Haïti earthquake crisis response] Please refresh tagwat ch for North Amercia

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:
> Yes, this is tagging for the renderer - the renders were needed fast
> and "tourism=camp_site" was rendered by existing renderers whereas
> the proper tag for refugee camps was not. So this practical if
> slightly messy workaround has been used. This issue is explained in
> the wiki page.

Agree that exceptional situations may require exceptional measures.

> I guess that the rendering of emergency and humanitarian tags will be
> discussed later, once this crisis will have settled down. Maybe a
> patch to an existing renderer will be developped and kept ready for
> such use.

Another alternative is not using OSM for emergency situations at all - 
instead use OSM technology on a system that is completely empty at first 
and then gets populated with all the imports etc.; later, after the 
crisis is over, copy selected stuff over into OSM proper.

That would also neatly solve the license issue; it is inconceivable that 
  the whole humanitarian community should subject themselves to OSM's 
license just because they're using OSM technology. With Haiti, the main 
reason we have lots of different datasets being created is that few 
people knew of OSM, but even if everyone was well informed, many would 
have frowned at stuffing all their data into a system where they can 
only retrieve it encumbered by a share-alike license. With a separate, 
PD licensed system (such as Mikel has chosen for the Gaza and recently 
Kibera), that problem would neatly go away.

Also, we wouldn't have people all over the planet wonder why Potlach 
suddenly offers them the option of placing a "Haiti building" POI in 
their town centre ;-)

Bye
Frederik