[OSM-talk] OSM is not the place for dissemination of authoritative data sets

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 19 March 2020, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> I think that someone who cannot respect these basic tenets of
> OpenStreetMap - that mappers on the ground have the last word on what
> gets into OSM and what not - shouldn't be allowed to publish software
> that interacts with our database. I think we should disallow any
> contributions made with RapID/map-with-ai and friends.
>
> [...]

While i agree on the conclusion (although i would phrase it in a 
different way:  Such tools should be banned unless their 
operators/developers can demonstrate that they are predominantly used 
in compliance with the values of OSM) i find the idea that a coporation 
like Facebook would voluntarily respect the basic tenets of 
OpenStreetMap naive.  Why should they?  A company like Facebook will 
only value OSM in so far as it seems to promise to be profitable for 
them.

I think I have said that in the past already:  "Assume good faith" as a 
general principle can on OSM only work w.r.t. individuals taking full 
and permanant responsibility for their own actions.  There cannot be an 
assumption of good faith for inherently amoral corporate entities or 
individuals making decisions on behalf of such entities.

Don't be so naive to think that a company like Facebook would be guided 
by anything else than by what they think is profitable for them.  As 
everyone can see they don't even comply with the OSM license if they 
think (a) that it is of economic advantage for them and (b) that they 
can get away with it.

Regarding the matter itself here - i have written about this at length 
already more than two years ago:

http://blog.imagico.de/on-imitated-problem-solving/

W.r.t. the motivation of corporate data user to push these things into 
OSM (in short: "to change OSM from being a map by the people for the 
people into a project of crowd sourced slave work for the corporate AI 
overlords") nothing has changed since then.

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