[OSM-talk] Draft Geocoding Guideline

[Christoph Hormann]

On Friday 02 June 2017, Simon Poole wrote:
>
> We have produced a draft document
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Draft_Geocoding_Guideline that is
> open for comments, either here on the mailing list or on the talk
> page of the document. [...]

A few quick comments on the first read:

I am not sure i agree with

> Individual Geocoding Results that are based on an Indirect Hit
> contain no OSM data and so are free of any obligations under the
> ODbL

because you can easily extend this view to consider any processed 
coordinates generated from OSM data (think ST_PointOnSurface() from 
polygons - which is ultimately based on coordinate interpolation as 
well) to "contain no OSM data".

You are also contradicting yourself later in a way when you say share 
alike applies even to indirect hits if they are aggregated - which does 
not make much sense if the individual indirect hits "contain no OSM 
data and so are free of any obligations under the ODbL".

IMO it would make sense to remove this distinction because the guideline 
makes no significant difference between these two cases.  And even if 
indirect hits contain no OSM data they are clearly derived from OSM 
data.


The core of the guideline seems to be the statement what is considered a 
substantial extract.  What bothers me about this is you base this on 
names:

> 1. only feature names and latitude/longitude information are included
> in the Geocoding Results

That would mean if you query something other than names (think: ref 
tags, house numbers etc.) everything is substantial.  This seems 
strange to me, could you elaborate on why this distinction is made?


I think it would not hurt to be more specific about the attribution 
requirements.  Instead of 

> The application developer is, however, required to credit
> OpenStreetMap.

use

"The application is, however, required to show credits for OpenStreetMap 
to the user as described in Section 4.3 of the ODbL."

because the current formulation could easily be read as a BSD license 
like credit requirement (which is much less than what the ODbL 
requires).

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/