Re: [talk-au] Bring all hats!
Sounds great and I look forward to it :-) On 7/11/2011 6:55 PM, Nick Hocking wrote: Hi Steve, Yes, I've got my tickets to SOTM and I hope you bring all your hats with you. In my spare time I develop some specialised applications for various sports/pastimes and I think OSM can be useful for some of these. I develop in Basic4PPC but the creators of this product can't make it work with Windows Phone 7. I'd like to upgrade my phones from Windows mobile 6.5 but won't until I can run the stuff I've already written and can develop new programs with Basic4ppc. There are already some useful BASIC4ppc programs that download OSM data and display in real time on a gps unit. Really usefull for mapping new areas (to see what has already been mapped recently). I'll talk to you at Denver about this and some other matters where I think Bing and OSM can be really usefull in Australia. Cheers Nick ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au -- Check out frontdoor - http://frontdoor.cloudapp.net/ ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
[talk-au] Hitting reset on talk-au
I'm speaking strictly personally here, posting to talk@ and opengeodata. OSM often crosses bridges in it's growth. Mostly they're technical, like introducing color maps, rendering new things or speeding up the system. We have a much more ugly bridge to cross in front of us. Would you want to be part of a community which includes people explicitly working to disrupt it, trolling it and breaking data? Would you want to be part of a community where people are literally scared for their jobs when thinking about helping run it? Over the last few days there has been a bunch of discussion on talk-au which you can read in the archives, though for your own sanity you might want to skip it. For the most part the posts revolve around the OSMF, the LWG and the license process. I considered my presence there over the last few days as both a last ditch attempt to salvage the data and more importantly the community that's there. As RichardF pointed out, their license acceptance rate is about half what most EU communities have achieved. I would say that the people on that list feel disaffected with the process and their representation in it. Despite multiple attempts at trying to have a reasonable dialog over both what happened and what we can do about it, mostly I've been met with extreme animosity. Most of that comes from people either banned from the main lists, been deleted/blocked from OSM or been moderated or who have publicly stated they're here to disrupt the project. I've tried to get many people involved posting there in what I thought was a worthwhile effort, in effect to save that list. Almost everybody declined to do so. Only RichardF braved it and was met with a predictable response. Frederik has given up and from my reading of his email considers talk-au dead (I think you should make that email public). I find that understandable. I've been trying to find someone to moderate the list along the Etiquette guidelines on the wiki. Mikel has given up, understandably, and he leads the main moderators. We found one native Australian to moderate but they backed out because they literally feared for their job safety, that the people who now inhabit the list would make life with their employer difficult. Thus, they declined to do so after initially accepting. I actually am convinced that was the right decision and the people on that list are capable of it. I don't think anyone I know in OSM would want to be part of a community like that. I think it's a sad low point in what otherwise is a wonderful project to be involved in. Let me be more clear, *I* don't want to be part of a community that accepts this. Who in their right mind would want to be a part of a community run by people explicitly out to disrupt, fork and troll? In the best traditions of open projects our ideas and code are Free. It's not clear that our time and server resources should be. Unlike our ideas and code, they're finite and open to abuse. Make no mistake that our time and resources are being used explicitly to destabilize the very project which provides them. Used by mostly anonymous or pseudonymous people who as I say have been kicked, banned or explicitly stated they want to destabilize OSM. This is not about censorship. If you read the lists, you'll find we've made available repeatedly both the methods and the people to help resolve issues. These people are free to fork the project and the data, it's all available for download. They have their own mailing lists. Are there genuine questions about license, it's implementation and so on? Absolutely. But level-headed discussion is not welcome on talk-au for the most part. There are a few people who can discuss this stuff impersonally there but it's a small part of the list. Now - why are we at this point? The OSMF and the working groups, the apparatus of how a chunk of this project is set up, are unable to deal with direct threats like this, even if it's been going on for a year or more. One of the main forks of OSM (if you can call it main, it doesn't yet display a map) is run by an ex-board member. When you have someone like that working together with those who've explicitly declared they want to disrupt OSM, it's very hard for a young, open and democratic organization to deal with. For the most part we have no idea how many of these people are even real too, it's been suggested that a few of the pseudonyms are in fact just one person creating them on the fly. We simply don't have the tools for it. Until last week we had no moderation at all, and that took many, many months (perhaps years) to set up. The board meets too infrequently to be able to respond to people explicitly working for its downfall, which perhaps is a little ironic. The working groups likewise I don't think have the bandwidth as they currently operate. Generally in an otherwise do-ocracy there is a lack of people who feel they have the authority to take on
Re: [talk-au] Bing
On 7/11/2011 6:13 AM, Sam Couter wrote: Andrew Harveyandrew.harv...@gmail.com wrote: That is, if OSM were as rigorous as Debian we wouldn't allow this as it is in violation of point 8 of the DFSG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines I'm glad somebody has mentioned Debian. You want to see information freedom done right, a functioning do-ocracy and most importantly a transparent, democratic decision-making process, you don't need to look any further than Debian. Debian's extremely open and democratic as you say. The problem is for years it went nowhere and the Shuttleworth went on his Antarctic cruise, figured out who was actually doing anything and created Ubuntu. Slightly less democratic but vastly better at shipping an OS anyone would want to use. Steve ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Fw: [OSM-talk] Scholarship program to State of the Map 2011
It would be wonderful if people from talk-au were able to apply for this, and come to SOTM. It's a super fun event. Steve On 6/19/2011 2:35 PM, Mikel Maron wrote: Hi The OpenStreetMap conference, State of the Map, is offering scholarships. Details below. Note that nominations close on Sunday, June 25th. We are also fundraising to help more mappers than our current minimum of 8. If you'd like to help, get in touch with *scholars...@stateofthemap.org *Thanks! Mikel == Mikel Maron == +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron - Forwarded Message *From:* Coast, Hurricane hurricane.co...@mapquest.com *To:* t...@openstreetmap.org t...@openstreetmap.org *Sent:* Wed, June 1, 2011 11:35:03 PM *Subject:* [OSM-talk] Scholarship program to State of the Map 2011 The State of the Map Committee is excited to announce a program to cover full travel and accommodations costs for mappers to attend State of the Map 2011 in Denver, Colorado (United States). We're seeking nominations from the community for potential mappers. We are seeking people from places where costs would prohibit attendance, developing countries, and places that are interesting geopolitically. The ideal candidates for funding are from countries with a small OSM community, perhaps just a few mappers in total. They have made a significant start at mapping their city, either through imagery or with their own GPS, and are directly familiar with the process of OSM. They may have started communicating among themselves, and made plans and scoped out the process for their local district. But, the community is nowhere near critical mass, and they need the inspiration and support to take OSM to the next level. We need to act fast! State of the Map is just over 3 and a half months away, tickets and visas need to be arranged. In order to allow enough time for all the arrangements, the nomination period will be short, and /ending at Sunday, June 25th/. The number of scholarships rewarded will be based on the success of fund-raising. From the nominations received, we'll review and invite scholars in late June. Please send your nominations to *scholars...@stateofthemap.org*. For each nomination, include the mappers name, OSM user name, email address, location, and a paragraph or two on why they'd be great to have at SOTM. Self nominations are accepted. Please forward this message to other relevant local OSM and mapping lists and social media! As for regions, here are a few regions that seem to fit the bill, but nominations are not limited to these places at all. * Eastern and Southern Europe: Belarus, Kosovo, Bulgaria * Arab States: Tunisia, Bahrain, Jordan * Asia: Nepal, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Indonesia * Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala * Africa: Liberia, Ivory Coast, Swaziland Sponsor-a-Mapper In previous years there has been a scholarship program to help mappers who wouldn't otherwise be able to attend get to State of the Map. This year we are announces an Sponsor-A-Mapper program. There are plenty of deserving individuals from all of the world that can't afford to attend SotM. To help them be able to come join the community in person in Denver why don't you consider paying to cover a portion of the cost of their ticket? We are attempting to raise an average of $2,500 USD per mapper in order to be sure to cover their costs. This will vary slightly by transportation costs depending from where the select scholarships are traveling. The more money we raise the more mappers we can sponsor! To Sponsor-a-Mapper please email *scholars...@stateofthemap.org* Thank you! ___ talk mailing list t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Going separate ways
On Jul 10, 2011, at 6:22 PM, David Murn wrote: I think the biggest problem people in .au had was that there were some issues which were specific to the Australian usage of OSM (imports of gov data, etc). Those who sought to change the licence claimed to be listening to people, but when Australian mappers raised issues, we were simply told 'bad luck youre only a tiny percentage of the data'. Can you point to that in any minutes or mailing list posts? We looked around for all the people claiming that we've been ignoring them and can't actually find any posts by them on the legal lists or to the LWG for many of the people involved. Of course, with so many fake names being used it's hard to be sure they weren't raised under a different pseudonym. From what I've seen, the LWG took all of the concerns very seriously and spent an awful lot of time, on an individual basis, trying to resolve them. Nearmap of course being a good example. So, I think, we need to get away from this idea that a fork is a bad thing. It isn't. There are two divergent communities, and it doesn't do either side any good to try and hold them together when they're so opposed. It doesnt do either side any good to cut ties and drift our separate ways either. Just because you dont get along with someone on a desert island, it doesnt mean you isolate yourself on the other side, your strength together will be much more than your individual strength. You're absolutely right, however the volunteers and democratically elected people who've tried to have rational discussions with most of the people here get shot down. Therefore Richard I think is expressing the view that we tried hard, we then tried to reconcile, we're still not getting anywhere, so what's the next step? Going our own ways in a suboptimal but available step. I urge you to contrast and compare that with other countries/communities who also have derived from CC data or have imports that need relicensing and so on. Most of them have worked it out. What we're scratching our heads about is how -au is different. I think we've been thinking pretty hard and not come up with anything other than trolls taking over the sentiment of the community. The fact that you might lose 100 mappers, might not really affect the project, the fact of losing a whole country of consumers, might. Agreed. The question is, if you were a volunteer (and we all are) who's been working on this what would you do? We could work on this imported data issue. Well, we have. We've asked multiple times for outlines of where the data is, who imported it and so on. To the best of my knowledge nobody has raised this substantially with the LWG, please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't attend every single meeting. We could work on making the LWG meetings more accessible to people in the -au timezone. Well, we have. Several times we've shifted the meeting hours (for example to speak with nearmap) and tried other ways to engage. We could spend time meeting in person. Well, we've tried a bit there though of course it's expensive and hard. The threat of violence hasn't made me want to come to -au despite having the means to do so, and we've made attempts to get people to come to SOTM. We could work on making the mailing lists a better place to be. Well, we have. In fact we've approached people about moderating this list but one of them won't do it because - get this - the person fears for his job. They're worried that if they moderate this list the trolls will start phoning their employer. That's quite something. Clearly, things are very unhealthy. If you'd like to help moderate, please get in touch. We don't think an outsider should do it, or anyone who operates under a pseudonym or has been moderated off another list. Of course we're not perfect. But I think we can say we're trying, even with people who traditionally we no longer have time for or who have been moderated off the main lists. You can jump in and say what we should have done in 2009 or something, and I'm sure we made mistakes. But without being personal, and understanding that everyone is a volunteer, what would you do in my position that's reasonable to change things? I'm sure if it was rational we'd attempt it. Steve ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Going separate ways
On Jul 10, 2011, at 7:22 PM, John Smith wrote: You keep making the same mistakes, and of course nothing is being resolved because you stick your head in the sand and try and pretend it will just magically take care of itself, all you are achieving lately is showing how arrogant you can be and how poorly you can spin things. John It's not worth my time responding to messages like this. I wrote a completely rational, neutral and open email outlining the things we've tried and asking for ideas of how to make it better. If you write back that I'm just arrogant and put my head in the sand, even if you're right, all you're doing is making an ad hominem attack that's not worth responding to. I'm very glad Anthony and I have been having reasonable conversations back and forth recently. If you were able to take a step back, assume good faith and reply again then I'm sure I would look in detail at the points you make[*]. Steve [*] - With the caveat that because there are so many pseudonyms being used, it would both be helpful, pragmatic and a sign of respect if you guys would start to identify yourselves. Unfortunately it's become known that some are puppet accounts and we don't know which is which and who's just doing this for fun. ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Going separate ways
On Jul 10, 2011, at 7:45 PM, John Smith wrote: On 11 July 2011 12:42, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com wrote: On Jul 10, 2011, at 7:34 PM, John Smith wrote: On 11 July 2011 12:30, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com wrote: It's not worth my time responding to messages like this. I wrote a completely rational, neutral and open email outlining the things we've tried and asking for ideas of how to make it better. Yes and didn't respond to a single query, but of course politicans do the same thing, they change the question into something they can answer. I didn't, you are correct. I said I would however, if it was an email assuming good faith and free of personal attacks. This is common is western societies. Or at least polite societies :-) So you decide to make radical changes to the OSM community and then refuse to answer questions cause it upsets your delicate nature? Not at all, I've been having delicate and difficult conversations for many years. Of course, I loose my temper sometimes like any human being but in general it's precisely because I can have those conversations (and the technical talent and community building) that I'm where I am today. Another point of order is that it wasn't somehow my exclusive decision. As I say, if at any point you want to ask me those questions again in an email that assumes good faith and is free of personal attack (I'll even allow you the implied personal attack above) then I will be happy to answer them. Steve ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
[talk-au] missing messages
It's been pointed out that I'm not replying to hundreds of messages from John Smith, Anthony and friends. I don't see them as they're automatically deleted. I find life is better without having the trolls fill my inbox. However, if I have missed any reasonable points in there then feel free to repost them, just don't put those guys email addresses in the to/from/cc fields... Steve ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
On 7/7/2011 9:37 PM, James Andrewartha wrote: On 8 July 2011 11:26, SteveCst...@asklater.com wrote: This reads like you disagree with taxation or death. I do too, but there's not much I can do about it. The vast majority of people are happy with where we are at and now it's down to people holding out because of a comma in the wrong place or a moral objection to various aspects of intellectual property law. While I agree that it's not perfect, I don't see how it's reasonable to throw everything away for one guy who doesn't like his countries laws. Unless you have a reasonable solution or I have misunderstood? I am quite happy with my country's laws, which don't include database right, and don't want to promote such a concept. Right, and I agree with you. But, stopping contributing to OSM or not helping the project as a whole by refusing to move license with the rest of us is a poor way of protesting the promotion of these concepts. I don't like them either, but here we are. It would be difficult and complicated to carve out exceptions just for you or just for Australia. What do you mean by throw everything away? Who is throwing what away? I mean throw away the efforts of all the licensing work we've done because one guy doesn't like technical detail X or has moral objection Y. That is, that we have spent many man years on this and there is no way to make everyone happy. We tried hard and it's time to move on. Also, once we're switched it's much easier to make the kind of fixes you want as subsequent switches are orders of magnitude more easy. Thus, lets put our minor differences aside and work for the greater goals we have, like mapping the world. Steve ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
Good to hear there is aerial now in your area, I hope you will continue to improve the map. Personally I've been adding lots of housenumbers lately. I find it weird that it's not as boring as I think it should be. Steve On 7/7/2011 11:13 PM, waldo000...@gmail.com wrote: At the time that I stopped, that's right, there was no other aerial imagery. I just checked again now and Bing actually seems pretty ok... Maybe I'll start again sometime...but honestly, I'm not really in the mood lately. Maybe after a steak dinner or two... :P On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 5:11 PM, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com mailto:st...@asklater.com wrote: Why did you stop then? Is there no aerial imagery where you are other than nearmap? On 7/7/2011 8:03 AM, waldo000...@gmail.com mailto:waldo000...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com mailto:st...@asklater.com wrote: ...I believe we should spend energy enlightening aerial providers (or wait for them to catch up) Yup, I'm waiting... (I just wanted to point out why I have stopped contributing - it's not in protest, and not because I've been perverted by 80n. Thanks for your responses anyway.) ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
On 7/8/2011 5:04 AM, Sam Couter wrote: SteveCst...@asklater.com wrote: No, John smith and friends are a separate issue, they troll many different discussions. Who are and friends? I only watch talk-au so if there's trolling going on elsewhere I haven't seen it. What I have seen is you dismissing others as being deliberately disruptive or as having hidden agendas, instead of addressing what they actually say. Ah, you need some context. If you go look at talk@ you'll find a lot of history from the people who now inhabit this list. In fact, several of them have either been banned or moderated. Actually no, I've said im unaware of any reasons not to accept (given we fixed near map, we fixed ordnance survey...) which is not the same as saying there aren't any. Many reasons have been given. I'll give you my two biggest right now: Eternal, irrevocable rights grant and indeterminate future licencing. Well the eternal right thing applies to CC and most other licenses, so I suspect that you don't like who the licensee is, OSMF? That's the reason it's shaped that the OSMF immediately license it back. From what I remember, our legal advice was there has to be a licensing party that things are assigned to in order to make it work. As for future licensing, do you have a better idea? As I've said, if we gave a more strict definition then a whole lot more people would complain, if it was more loose then more would complain. So the line has to be drawn somewhere and the LWG chose that balance. I doubt very much we could draw the line anywhere else without more, not less, problems. For my own contributions using my own GPS traces and survey work, that's one thing. I haven't yet decided if I'll create a new OSM account and click Accept, I've clicked Decline for my existing OSM account because of the sources I've used in the past. But I can't agree to the CTs when I'm using CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. Nearmap isn't the problem and doesn't need fixing, ODbL is. Maybe it can't be fixed any time soon, but denying that it's a problem doesn't help. You keep repeating that I am deny all these problems. Could you go back and read, as above, where I point out all sorts of problems and it's about finding a balance? Whatever we do, there will be problems. you have denied any problems with licence incompatibility. Where did I do that? I think I mention multiple times how many problems we have had in many areas. You seem to think that all the Australian CC-BY and CC-BY-SA data that has been imported can either be kept, which seems unlawful to me, or deleted without considering it any real loss. You keep doing this too. Where do I say anything of the sort? I have no idea what this data is you're referring to, or what license it's under. Why do you assume I do know all about it? Of course you can't just relicence data without permission, and of course we want to minimize deletion. Why don't you start at the beginning and explain what, where and when this data was imported? Did you ever bring it up with the LWG? [Sam:] I hate to sound like a third-grader, but you started the ad hominem. I did, where? The first message I replied to. Accusing others of hidden agendas or riling you up for no reason other than enjoyment. I've known them for a lot longer than you have it seems, and as I mention they've been kicked, banned or moderated before. ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
On 7/8/2011 4:28 AM, Sam Couter wrote: Also, your frame of reference is with OSM up and running and having these kinds of relationships. When I started OSM we had no data at all and nobody wanted to give us data under any license, let alone cc. So those of us who climbed the mountain to get those people to give us data see asking people to switch (such as ordnance survey for example) as a far smaller problem. I don't see it as a small problem. Australian government data is mostly released under CC licences, which are widely compatible with most open uses. They've hit the 99% mark, so there's not a lot of motivation to change further. OSM-F has placed OSM in the remaining 1%. Perhaps we're talking at cross purposes because most of the community I'm familiar with, which is all of the EU and the US, consider government data a nice starting point but mappers on the ground as generally much better. Is the perception in Australia that you should just do whatever the government says you should do? Or that OSM should just be a host for government data? Im confused that I was discussing nearmap but you jumped to the government, what am I missing? The bit where you mentioned large sclerotic government institutions. I think we've just about covered Nearmap, and the government sources in Australia are collectively the next biggest potential data source. So they're only a potential source, things have not been imported? In any case, as someone who built this project and has convinced many organizations and government agencies to open up, I urge you to have a longer timeframe outlook. These types of agencies tend to get with it in the end. Even the ordnance survey has, for example. You've mentioned Ordnance Survey many times. Are they the only success story? No, we have lots, just read the LWG minutes. Australian agencies have already gotten with it. We have data available under various open licences. How are Australians supposed to go to the Australian government agencies (individually, of course) and explain that while it's exactly what we've been asking for for a long time, it's not good enough because one specific project chose a licence based on concerns that they needed to protect rights that don't exist in Australia or even in the majority of the world? Well by not being defeatest for a start. What I think I'm trying to get across is that we convinced our governments, in fact these days they want to be involved with OSM rather than OSM going to them to be involved. So, why is it different in australia? Is there a culture of submitting to the government (which would be the opposite of the US, but closer to the UK) or something? What are the sticking points, and how are they different from the sticking points we managed to go through in the EU and US? Steve ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
Anthony The reason we have a hostile relationship is because of all your spamming and trolling. You were kicked from the legal list, the only person I'm aware of to have managed that. I suspect the real reason you want a nice relationship is funding and other benefits we've worked hard for, while refusing to help with the community process to switch licenses. At this point really the positive gestures need to come from you, for example helping us switch so we can all (including FOSM) move on. Steve On 7/8/2011 6:23 AM, Anthony wrote: On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 2:24 AM, Steve Coastst...@asklater.com wrote: I mean throw away the efforts of all the licensing work we've done because one guy doesn't like technical detail X or has moral objection Y. That is, that we have spent many man years on this and there is no way to make everyone happy. We tried hard and it's time to move on. Also, once we're switched it's much easier to make the kind of fixes you want as subsequent switches are orders of magnitude more easy. Thus, lets put our minor differences aside and work for the greater goals we have, like mapping the world. I for one think a partnership between FOSM and OSMF would be a great thing. We *are* both trying to map the world. I've made this invitation before but I'd like to make it again: Work with us to help preserve, and keep up to date, the CC-BY-SA data which otherwise would be left to rot in a static final dump. If you believe, as you say, that CC-BY-SA might work out the problems (which you say are minor) in the 4.0 license, then you'll be especially glad you have FOSM to help you switch back. There's no reason that FOSM and OSMF have to have a hostile relationship. We're both trying to map the world, under the license we deem most appropriate. ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
On 7/8/2011 2:01 PM, Elizabeth Dodd wrote: On Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:05:28 -0700 Steve Coastst...@asklater.com wrote: If you go look at talk@ you'll find a lot of history from the people who now inhabit this list. In fact, several of them have either been banned or moderated. big snip of trash I've known them for a lot longer than you have it seems, and as I mention they've been kicked, banned or moderated before. I have not been kicked, banned or moderated, not on any list in my life. Don't you ever say Hello? Am I missing out on something here? Why am I discriminated against? Are such questions on your mind often? I can confirm that other mappers have received emails telling them that their views are well known, and don't require repeating. Likewise I can confirm that All Blokes is not a pseudonym of John Smith. I see. And to return to the topic I'm hardly mapping anything now - since the big argument blew up I have little interest and decided to do some other things. Did you come to me because you are hardly mapping anything now - since the big argument blew up you have little interest and decided to do some other things? ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
FOSMs not going anywhere for some simple reasons. The people running it are ineffective, the data will be incompatible when OSM switches, fosm doesn't have any of the agreements to derive data from aerial imagery. I could go on, but those are the big ticket items. Everyone should be aware of the theater show that 80n is running merely to disrupt the community, and it's very sad that so far he's been successful. Steve On 7/7/2011 7:01 AM, 80n wrote: On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 1:15 PM, Andrew Harvey andrew.harv...@gmail.com mailto:andrew.harv...@gmail.com wrote: The more who contribute directly to fosm rather than OSM, the less the work there will be for fosmers dealing with duplicated data resulting from merges. If it becomes a big problem, I think we should be able to do manual merges of OSM data into fosm, assuming we have the volunteers. Otherwise we can just leave OSM data behind if no one is longer to merge it into fosm. The probability of collisions is quite small in practice. We are able to automatically sync all OSM updates into fosm.org http://fosm.org in near real time. Consequenly fosm.org http://fosm.org already has more content than OSM and the gap will continue to widen. It will become a massive gulf if OSM ever has the courage to mass delete all non-ODbL licensed content, but I can't see that happening any time soon. The worst case for a collision is an edit in OSM that conflicts with an earlier edit made to the same element in the fosm database. In this case we place the OSM edit in a conflict log and preserve the fosm edit. Other kinds of conflict include the same feature being added to both OSM and fosm independently. This will result in the feature being duplicated in fosm, but it's easy to manually delete such artifacts when they are noticed, retaining whichever is the best one. My largest concern is with piecemeal replacement of non-ODbL licensed content in OSM with inferior quality tracing. This will appear as legitimate edits to the fosm sync process and will result in fosm being degraded needlessly. We've talked about mechanisms for watching areas where this might happen and for users who might be doing this. We can revert such edits in fosm and get the good stuff back providing we notice that it has happened. 80n ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
On 7/7/2011 7:15 AM, 80n wrote: On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 3:09 PM, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com mailto:st...@asklater.com wrote: FOSMs not going anywhere for some simple reasons. The people running it are ineffective, the data will be incompatible when OSM switches, fosm doesn't have any of the agreements to derive data from aerial imagery. I could go on, but those are the big ticket items. Everyone should be aware of the theater show that 80n is running merely to disrupt the community, and it's very sad that so far he's been successful. You seem worried, Steve. You've been very successful at perverting certain sections of the community, Australia being a good example as the checks and balances of normal community communication are harder because of the timezone differences and costs of flying. Essentially, people in Australia don't get to hear from the rest of us on the phone or in the pub and we let you spam the lists for a long time. So to an outsider it can look like you're this rational guy who used to be on the board and so on. I've heard about the various conspiracy theories you've been peddling personally off-list too. It's hard to fix that, however I am resourceful. The first step is to meet your clownmails message-for-message so you don't automatically have the loudest voice. By pointing out the simple facts and having you talk past them and get to the real issues (you want to rile people like me up, make us fret and worry) it is now clear to a rational observer what the intentions are. I think your nightmare scenario is that I fly to Australia and sit in the pub and discuss the real reasons you're so upset. Steve ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
On 7/7/2011 7:40 AM, waldo000...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 4:25 PM, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com mailto:st...@asklater.com wrote: You've been very successful at perverting certain sections of the community, Australia being a good example ... Steve, please don't underestimate the ability of Australia to filter bullshit. I just want to: 1) be able to contribute with the confidence that my data will never be deleted. We've gone to insanely long lengths to make that the case, including getting clarifications from Ordnance Survey, Nearmap and many others. As far as I'm aware there are no remaining issues as to why you can't click 'accept'. 2) continue using nearmap, which is insanely awesome. Not being a shareholder I can't influence them directly. As far as I'm aware, their issue is that they don't like the fact that we can change license later even though it's restricted to a free and open license. For all practical purposes I doubt we will ever change again unless and until CC release 4.0 which is mooted that it will contain provisions for data licensing. It's a simple balance between making sure the data remains open but also not going through this horrific license process again in the future if, for example, CC is suddenly better in 3-5 years time. We could have drawn that line a bit more to one side and defined the license or we could have drawn it a bit the other way and said that every single contributor has to accept again. Either way there will be detractors. The LWG is a bunch of volunteers and they spent a ton of time making that judgement and whatever they chose it would be imperfect. I prefer the LWG making a careful decision to the opposite extreme of do whatever nearmap says (not that they ever made demands to my knowledge) as it would be short sighted to deflect the project for one company. If you look at Bing on the other hand, I believe we're entirely happy giving imagery derivation rights under the future direction outlined above. So, I believe we should spend energy enlightening aerial providers (or wait for them to catch up) given Bing's enlightened example rather than bowing to their short-term goals. Even Ordnance Survey have been great to work with through these issues. Even OS! So while no doubt nearmap is a great resource and it's a shame they no longer want to be involved, it's clear that the majority do - even large sclerotic government institutions are being agile and helpful about this. The door, as ever, is open should nearmap every change their minds. Steve ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
Why did you stop then? Is there no aerial imagery where you are other than nearmap? On 7/7/2011 8:03 AM, waldo000...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com mailto:st...@asklater.com wrote: ...I believe we should spend energy enlightening aerial providers (or wait for them to catch up) Yup, I'm waiting... (I just wanted to point out why I have stopped contributing - it's not in protest, and not because I've been perverted by 80n. Thanks for your responses anyway.) ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
This is exactly right. On 7/6/2011 5:35 AM, Chris Barham wrote: Hi Andrew, On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 21:29, Andrew Harveyandrew.harv...@gmail.com wrote: snip Are you moving to the fosm db? If so, great! Less problems with trying to merge your data into fosm, and we can all get back to mapping. Do you have any concerns over the switch? I have concerns. The FAQ here gives valid reasons to fork an open source project: http://fossfaq.com/questions/52/what-does-it-mean-to-fork-an-open-source-project and the multiple forks of OSM may have ignored the advice to only fork When you have exhausted all other options. Forks are not a guaranteed success. They may have good reasons, ideals and differing opinions, but the parent project has a brand, and for OSM it's a powerful one. As an example everyone has heard of MySQL, but what about Maria? Mysql - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysql#Forks_of_MySQL Personally I don't care about the licence. I feel that the forks and this resulting dilution of effort will become a drain on all the projects (united we stand/divided etc etc), and have become a shouting match where the 'political' goals of the forked projects are trumpeted over the stated reason for the thing being there - an open map. Cries of We're more open don't help when you can't rustle up the hosting fees or development volunteers. So a fork must become popular. More popular than other forks or the parent project. Was this the real reason for your post with mention of FOSM (and no other OSM spin-offs), and seeding fear uncertainty and doubt regarding *possible* data deletion.. you were recruiting? I'd like to think all this rather dull licence bickering will play out and OSM will continue and strengthen. It's sad that people with agendas are talking up the 'possible' deletion of data, and rushing off to fork. That energy could have been used towards working on ways of keeping or replacing the data in OSM. A satisfactory local example where things turned out well is where Nearmap made it's generous offer to allow pre-existing data to remain under the new licence. However on this list there was little rejoicing, there was a lot of picking over the actual wording of their offer; looking at the legal-eze, hairsplitting terminology or imagined loopholes in order to justify the fork projects existence. Have fun. Cheers, Chas ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes
On 7/6/2011 3:20 PM, Sam Couter wrote: Steve Coastst...@asklater.com wrote: This is exactly right. It's only exactly right if you don't have a problem with the new licence, with the process by which it was implemented, with mass deletion of data, with the proliferation of incompatible open licences, with irrevocable and eternal rights grants, with future relicencing at OSM-F's whim, etc. Dismissing the objections of people who don't share your viewpoint as some kind of hidden agenda or shitstirring for shitstirring's sake is immature, childish and unproductive. Failing to understand that others genuinely have different viewpoints from you is a glaring failure for a man who's supposed to be a leader in an open community. Wow, you infer a lot from my four word sentence. Do you have any evidence to back any of it up? Steve ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
