[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




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