[OSM-talk] Contact And Remap Campaign

[Guillaume Rischard]

On 5 Feb 2012, at 12:51, David Earl wrote:

> While several of us in Cambridgeshire have tried this, we've had very limited success. It's hard to tell, but the problem seems to that the vast majority of the problem people aren't receiving the emails. We have no way to contact them.

I've been more successful here in Luxembourg by looking for the non-responders elsewhere, and personalising the messages I send. We'll be fully ODbL-ready by April.

Birds of a feather flock together, and OSM contributors tend to gather in similar other places. I've gotten agreements after contacting non-responding usernames on geocaching.com, gpsies, flickr, facebook and twitter, local geek communities, or simply googling them, maybe with site:.lu or the name of the place they've mapped. When the username looks like a name, I google possible full names.

The message you send is important, and the one on the wiki is terrible: it meanders in complicated legal details, demands a long answer, and fails to explain what will happen without a response. Simon Poole has something much better, which I've adapted; I try to send it in the user's native language, and to personalise it. For example, if they are into geocaching, I mention that keeping their data would be important for geocachers as well. If keeping their data will have a strong local impact, I include a link to Frederik's WTFE map or Simon's Cleanmap. The openstreetmap.lu link is simply a redirect to .org.

> Subject: The COUNTRY, REGION OR PLACE OpenStreetMap Community needs your agreement
> 
> Hello NAME,
> 
> You haven't been active in the OpenStreetMap project for quite a while.
> 
> Because of that you may have missed that the last phase of the re-licensing has started. In other words, if you do not agree to the new contributor terms the community will have to remove and remap the data that you have contributed in WHERE.
> 
> Even if you don't intend to actively participate in the future, it would still be important for all other users and mappers if you could license your data under the new license.
> 
> Here is the official announcement:
> http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/We_Are_Changing_The_License
> 
> You can accept the license in the profile of your OSM account or here: 
> http://openstreetmap.lu/user/terms
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Guillaume, Luxembourg



With this and our remapping efforts, I believe we will achieve 100% ODbL compliance before April. http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/?view=wtfe&lon=5.5&lat=49.9&zoom=8 shows how we are ahead of our neighbours. The majority of the mappers who remain on http://odbl.poole.ch/luxembourg-20111208-20120201-poly.html are ungooglable, haven't responded, have been remapped, aren't significant, or a selection of the above.

Cheers,

Guillaume