On 8 June 2011 09:39, TimSC <mapp...@sheerman-chase.org.uk> wrote: > On 08/06/11 08:15, Peter Miller wrote: >> >> My experience is that the LWG never makes definitive statements! >> > > I find that annoying sometimes but, if we are to follow to Spinoza's example > that we should "made a ceaseless effort not to [...] scorn human actions, > but to understand them", LWG have to deal with legal advice that is also not > definitive. Hopefully they can offer a definitive position on matters such > as good mapping practice - like if we should import data of uncertain > compatibility.
Thank you for reminding me of that very sound advice. > >> I suggest that you turn the tables on them and send them an email >> saying that you will import the OGL-licensed data in xx days unless >> you get a statement from them in the mean time saying that it would be >> violating the OSM licensing terms and compromising your status as a >> contributor. >> > > I have set one or two deadlines on LWG in the past but it doesn't fit with > their working pattern. Until now, nothing gets decided, or is put to > discussion leading up to a decision, in any forum other than the > teleconference. But to their credit, they are quite open and understanding > when you do phone in and discuss matters. This is something I want to work > on: to have a medium-long term discussion with LWG outside the weekly > teleconference. I think the suggestion was met with a mixed response - > discussions will continue. In the modern world with email, wikis, face to > face, etc, there is more to life than teleconferences! Great. In the end you may need to make a judgement on the import and you may decide to just get on with it! > >> Regarding data formats. Can I suggest that that we gratefully accept >> data in whatever format it is provided. We can ask politely for it to >> be in an better format but please don't complain either about the >> quality of the data or the suitability of the format which may support >> councils who will argue that they should delay releasing anything >> until they have got it right and in the perfect format. The phrase is >> 'raw data now' (warts and all). >> > > Agreed. If the data is even slightly usable, someone in the community can > convert it. > > I am currently working on a legally gray dataset (which I am not importing, > obviously) which is currently a mixture of closed data and data that a > government agency aspires to make open data. They seem to lack the urgency > or resources to separate the two, so I am doing it for them (without them > asking) and I will ask nicely if they will release "my" data subset (for > which they have the copyright). Sounds like a very good approach. > >> On a separate note. Would you be able to do a comparison between place >> names in NatGaz and in OSM. I think we will be surprised how many >> places we are still missing from OSM. My guess is that OSM only >> contains about 65% of the 50K places in that database. Here it is: >> http://data.gov.uk/dataset/nptg >> > > That is an interesting data set. I might use a different approach because it > seems unlikely the original data contains significant errors(?). Currently, > I use XAPI to query OSM for objects near to a record in the government > database. I am not sure if the admins would appreciate me hammering the XAPI > server with 50K requests! or that might be fine... I could use the UK dump, > "slice" it to get place=*, import it into a separate microcosm server on my > laptop, and then do XAPI requests to my laptop server. I will have a think. We are working on a capabilty to do programatic extractions of OSM without bothering the main OSM hosting but have no timescale at present. May be sooner or later so probably not worth waiting. Regarding a later comment that NatGaz may also contain errors. That is certainly true and I do not advocate any mindless 'import' of that data for this dataset which contains some old data and may be of a pretty low standard in places. However.... I know that there are many many places in the UK which are missing from OSM, some quite large. Another source of intelligence would be places in the UK (or indeed elsewhere in the world) which are in Wikipedia and which are not in OSM near the location given in Wikipedia. These are probably already available from FreeBase. Regards, Peter > > Regards, > > Tim > > > _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
