[OSM-talk] HDYC, login requirement and "privacy"

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 04 May 2017, Michał Brzozowski wrote:
>
> https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=57813
>
> I don't like the idea how this was never introduced and discussed
> outside of the German forum.

So you think the German community should be required to proactively 
communicate any subject they discuss in German language channels to the 
international community?

> I think that such "privacy" measures are futile and go against the
> spirit of OSM - transparency.

Well - HDYC is a tool offered by Pascal Neis, AFAIK it is not even open 
source.  Pascal could turn it off any time if he wanted to and of 
course he can also put up constraints.

If you think that is against the spirit of OSM that is up to you but 
don't forget that there are tons of tools based on OSM data developed 
and run with restricted access you never hear about.  It is not really 
conceivable how in case of HDYC making such a tool available for all 
mappers based on authentification with an OSM account makes this less 
in the spirit of OSM than a private tool that is not even known to the 
public.

> Maybe this is due to some "moral panic" in Germany revolving around
> privacy, just like StreetView ban - except it's made clear that your
> edits are public and you agree to it!

Just to make this clear since there are likely quite a few people 
reading here who will not be able or willing to parse the discussion on 
the German forum - discussion there was about privacy concerns w.r.t. 
editing metadata, which is what is the basis of HDYC.  Mixing this with 
the subject of openness of geodata and privacy concerns reagarding 
geodata (like mappers recording names from the doors of private homes 
etc.) is not really appropriate - two very different matters which need 
to be considered separately.

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