[OSM-talk] Are there any other projects in a similar fork situation? (Slightly OT)
Brendan Morley
morb.gis at beagle.com.au
Sat Oct 2 04:51:56 BST 2010
Hi Serge,
On 2/10/2010 12:04 PM, Serge Wroclawski wrote:
> Now my opinion of any potential OpenStreetMap fork.
>
> I think such a project would fail, and here are my reasons why:
>
If failure is the opposite of success, what are your criteria for success?
> 2) The forkers don't agree on the reason to fork
>
True.
> Others want a
> whole new map that's (effectively) public domain (whether that's CC0
> or CC-BY, or something else)
Yes.
> If you believe strongly in "public
> domain" geodata, you won't find BY-SA acceptable,
Is this really the case?
I actually investigated the use of public domain principles - however
Australian copyright law does not allow it. The best we can do is a CC
BY with zero attribution. If there's anyone out there who can let me
know why zero attribution is not a good enough substitute for public
domain, I'd like to get in contact with you.
> 3) OSM has external organizational support
>
> OSM now has organizational, government and commercial support. That's
> something none of the forks will have.
I beg to differ.
CommonMap (the CC BY of which you write) definitely has Australian
Government interest.
CC BY-SA suffers from a flaw that government cannot take back anything
from the community. And any support given by government (from what I've
seen) applies equally to CC BY repositories as well.
> I haven't seen anything from the forkers that gives the average user a
> compelling reason to switch. The average contributor doesn't care
> about whether the license is CC-BY-SA or ODbL. And since OSM has the
> mindshare, developer mindshare and financial resources backing it,
> it's likely to remain ahead.
>
Again, all depends on your criteria for success.
Just having a one stop shop for public sector geodata would be
achievement enough from a personal perspective. The ability for all the
local knowledge to be fed back to government is certainly icing on the cake.
Thanks,
Brendan
More information about the talk
mailing list