[OSM-talk] FourSquare and OSM

[Steve Bennett]

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 9:27 AM, Joseph Reeves <iknowjoseph at gmail.com> wrote:
> Presumably the good folks behind the license change will say that any
> short-term damage to OSM caused by removing data is outweighed by the
> benefits of a new license; the ODbL even, possibly, makes data
> exchange with these 3rd parties more secure in the long term.

Ouch. So after years of laboring in the background, we finally make a
splash on the world scene, getting picked up by some pretty prominent
sites. Weeks later, we start removing large slabs of data, because of
an arcane licensing debate that no one outside OSM gives a toss about.

If this actually happens, it will be by far the stupidest thing OSM
has ever done. But maybe I'm misunderstanding the meaning of that
phrase about "database rebuilding"?

> That's the optimistic way of putting it. You could be a pessimist and
> say that OSM data is already hugely inconsistent and full of holes,
> missing roads and imaginary data.

I can't speak for other countries, but in my city (Melbourne,
population 4 million, second biggest in Australia), parts of the
largest freeway, right near the centre of town, are currently on the
chopping board. That's a lot worse than any other everyday missing
roads, holes etc.

Steve