[OSM-talk] Fwd: DWG policy on Crimea

Yuri Astrakhan yuriastrakhan at gmail.com
Mon Oct 22 13:51:51 UTC 2018


On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 8:22 AM Mateusz Konieczny <matkoniecz at tutanota.com>
wrote:

> I think a country relation should describe how the specific country think
> of its borders. So if two countries claim the same territory, those two
> relations will overlap.
>
> That is absurd and conflict with OSM rule to map what exists.
>
On the contrary, it actually matches OSM rules better than deciding
yourself.  When drawing a city outline, you go to that city's government,
and get the geoshape from them. By extension, if you draw a country, you
should use that country's definition.  If two country's definitions happen
to overlap, we ought to document both.

> E.g. it would be illegal in some countries to generate political map not
> according to that country's government.
>
> It is also against Chinese law to publish accurate maps of China. It is
> not a sufficient reason to forbid accurate mapping of China in OSM.
>
I did not say we must abide by laws of every country - would not be
possible in case of conflicts. I only said that some countries require you
to draw maps according to their laws.  China is clearly a special case
here, but other countries are much more reasonable, yet still expect you to
draw their maps for them according to their rules.

> So when I generate a map for Russia, I have to show Crimea as part of
> Russia.  For Ukraine - as part of Ukraine.  Same for China and India and ...
>
> There are also other sources of data. For example to show proper terrain
> shape or to show ratings of restaurants and for many others use cases OSM
> is not sufficient.
>
The argument "it doesn't work for X, therefor we shouldn't make it work for
Y" is puzzling. We can easily make it work for the very practical usecase I
outlined -- drawing countries' borders based on the expectations of a
specific user's location.  Country borders are by definition a
controversial topic without a single answer, and as you said, there are
other data sources for it. Yet we add it to OSM because it has a very
tangible value to the data consumers (who don't have to mix-in multiple
data sources for the basic mapping needs).
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