Hello again, This time, no weird things. I thinked a little about the whole transit data stuff, and I had an idea: if we think of the very minimalistic set of things, that someone willing to go to a "lost" place needs to know to succeed in planning his trip (I especially think of very lost places, far in the countryside), then maybe, the "operating centre" (say, headquarters' adress), and at least the welcome page of the website, of "surrounding" transit agencies, would still be a good start for that. If, by clicking a place, any user could have access to this minimalistic set of data about surrounding transit agencies, then at least he would know where to search the remaining data he needs to plan his trip. I am thinking here of a trip I made to portugal last summer, and about my endless search for a transit agency that would cover a specific place, 30km west of Lisbon (West Birre and Murches, for those who know), and I found everything about what was just 8km east or further of that point, but nothing closer, no matter how hard I searched for it. If only I had known the names of the transit agencies that operated on that specific place, or at least around there (but as much of them as possible, ideally all of them!) then when searching "their name" + if necessary the names of surrounding cities, on google, I might have found something. And then, if any data concerning these agencies were available on the internet (even by some local people that would have put these timetables on a local site, not belonging to the transit agency: this is not our problem!), I would have found the reamaining information I needed : plan, and timetable, without anybody violating any copyright or database right. The problem of transit agencies who do not have a web site is another concern, as for that it falls back to the issue of true transit data and the necessity of an authorization to reproduce it (if the data about their lines isn't available at all on the internet, then without the authorization you could link to nowhere, neither could you take pictures and extract anything from them to put it on the internet, without proper authorization; and unless the positions of the bus stops, acquired by means of a gps, are free to use (which, I guess, we still cannot decide for sure), then I think, based on what was said earlier, that we can do nothing about this problem yet.)
So, I would like to know: is it possible, without asking any permission, to put at least one geographical point about a transit agency, on the osm (or transiki) map, weither it be the adress of its headquarters or the barycentre of their transport network, and, say, the number (amount) of their lines?The total amount of lines a company operates, and if possible, the average distance each line runs on, would be useful to know in order to decide, for example, wether you include a transit agency in a search related to one point on the map, or not. It would give a hint about its transport network's "radius" of operation, "how far it can reach", more or less. Also, you could simply classify transit agencies in different categories: urban, interurban, regional, national, if it happens that "average line length" is still too much data to be free of use. And also, is it always possible to link to a website's front page without asking permission to the site's owner? I'm asking here about minimalistic things, I mean, there must at least be * something* you could systematicly say about all transit agencies, wether they agree with it or not, on transiki, and possibly, without any strong dependancy to the local country's law...and if the headquarters' adress is still not a free piece of data you can add without asking, then find another relevant set of coordinates. At least something! And what about quoting the name itself of the transit agency? Isn't it using a trademark on a third party website without authorization of the owner of the trademark? I would say no based on the fact that google seems to have the authorization to display almost anything about a company when you search for it - on google, but still... Thank you in advance for your help, and sorry if I insist like that on the "not asking the authorization" thing: I only believe that it could make the gathering of at least *some* data...much much faster, and the coverage of the transiki map, at least in its poorest informative power, could be really great much more quickly, if we can achieve it legally. And besides, it would need much less effort, than if we always had to negociate with every single transit agency, to get any single piece of their data, especially if they never answer to anything about these type of questions, for any reason they may have... Good night Andrei
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