[OSM-talk] [OSM-legal-talk] In what direction should OSM go?

Toby Murray toby.murray at gmail.com
Thu Sep 30 06:04:00 BST 2010


On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 11:22 PM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
> In the particular case we were talking about data that "cannot be
> obtained by surveying" (*).
> [...]
> (*) I actually can't think of any boundary data for which this is the
> case, though.

In that case I guess I need a how-to. How should I survey my county
border? Most of it goes through private land covered with wheat, cows
and angry farmers with shotguns. Part of it goes through the artillery
impact zone of a military base. It shakes the windows in town, 10
miles away when they are firing. Don't think I want to go surveying
there. Part of it follows the former path of a river. "Former" because
the entire area is covered with a rather large lake now thanks to a
dam.

So then since it can't be surveyed, we shouldn't have these borders in
OSM? That means you can no longer do queries on OSM data based on "is
in ???" which would seem to be kind of a big feature for a mapping
application. I guess any time you want to do anything useful with OSM
data you would have to go out and find your own boundary data then?
That seems rather unhelpful too. Don't we want to make it reasonably
easy for people to use our data?



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