[OSM-talk] ODbL-clean Coastlines

[Paul Norman]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Russ Nelson [mailto:nelson at crynwr.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2012 7:42 AM
> To: Paul Norman
> Cc: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] ODbL-clean Coastlines
> 
> Paul Norman writes:
>  > I have been running a nightly coastline generation on my server,
> using the  > latest data from my jxapi server. Tonight I switched it
> over to filter out  > data that WTFE reports as dirty. This is somewhat
> more aggressive than the  > rebuild will be, but the results are
> worrisome.
> 
> Nahhhh, not particularly. If you've looked at the PGS, you'll see that
> it is 99% crap. My problem with it is that 1) it's public domain, 2)
> imported by an anonymous user, 3) I fixed it in my region, leaving
> nothing remaining from the original import except the node and way
> existence, BUT (you knew there was a but) without the odbl=clean tag
> that I added, it would have been deleted. Or, at least, OSMI says it
> would have been deleted.
> 
> Why are we deleting public domain data from OSM? If it says source=PGS,
> it should not be deleted no matter who did the import.
> If it was subsequently edited by a decliner, well, that's different.
> 
> It's particularly galling that anonymous users who haven't accepted or
> declined are having their copyright respected. If you don't post your
> land *with your name and address* in New York State, you cannot
> successfully pursue a claim of trespass.

Copyright applies when you author something, regardless of if you state your
name on it. As OSMF is the party wanting to do something not allowed by the
(implied) license of the contributer, they have to seek permission. If the
copyright holder decides not to reply, OSMF doesn't have permission to
license it under different terms.