[OSM-talk] What to call OSM data?

[Joseph Reeves]

Apologies for bringing up imports on the list. At least I didn't mention
the license change though! ;)

>That's not wrong either, but not precise enough to distinguish a project
>such as OSM from e.g. governments' Open Data efforts.

Continuing to play Devil's Advocate, I think this is just an issue of
imagination scope: Why do we need to distinguish OSM from governments' Open
Data efforts? Does that bring us any benefit? Are you trying to highlight a
difference of scale or is there one type of "Open" that's different from
some "other Open"?

I'd like to imagine a future scenario in which a country's National Mapping
Agency decides that OSM is going to be the official source of geographic
data. As an NMA contributes and maintains data within OSM, the
"crowdsourced" argument becomes weaker and the "Open" word becomes more
important.

Cheers, Joseph



On 26 November 2012 13:43, Tobias Knerr <osm at tobias-knerr.de> wrote:

> On 26.11.2012 14:06, Joseph Reeves wrote:
> > Playing Devil's Advocate, "crowdsourced" isn't appropriate for large
> > swathes of OSM data: Europe, for example, is dominated by imported, not
> > crowdsourced, CORINE data.
>
> I don't believe that Europe is "dominated" by CORINE data. Several
> European countries never imported CORINE, and elsewhere most of the work
> would still consist of roads and other non-landuse data.
>
> Also consider that imports today almost necessarily have to be performed
> with manual interaction (to avoid duplicates and so on) and by various
> individuals. So even when imports take place, they are done in a
> "crowdsourced" manner.
>
> So I think "crowdsourced" is the most appropriate term that is still
> meaningful.
>
> > I'd describe OSM data simply as "open".
>
> That's not wrong either, but not precise enough to distinguish a project
> such as OSM from e.g. governments' Open Data efforts. That's because it
> overlaps with open licensing, which I assume will be stored separately
> in metadata, and various other associations of the term.
>
> Tobias
>
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