[OSM-talk] Existing data

[john whelan]

Can some one check my logic please, and note I am not advocating that
someone should do it only that we should think about the implications before
it happens.

Today OSM is licensed in a way that means in round terms you can basically
do whatever you like with it.

The new system will be licensed to say much the same but there seems to be a
proposal floating around to delete the existing data.

The end users basically are only interested in obtaining an .OSM format file
or going to a web site that displays the map.  They don't need to connect to
the original underlying database, his is very important, a copy will do for
them just as well.

So let's assume that someone takes a back up of the existing database.
Planet file?  then merges in the new database, perhaps the tags or any roads
that don't exist before to create a merged database.  I don't see anything
to prevent this from happening.

Now will end users prefer to look at the combined data or to look at a map
from the new license database which only contains a subset of the data from
the combined database?  Judging by the graphical displays of the map under
different licenses this will be a small subset in many cases.

It will be interesting to see what Mapquest and Bing do if substantial
amounts of the map are deleted for having the wrong license.  In other words
how relevant will the new database containing only data licensed under the
new system be?

Cheerio John
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20101113/aa96cb22/attachment.html>