Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-08 Thread Richard Fairhurst
Ian Sergeant wrote:
 However, if the transition happened today in Sydney,  we would lose 
 every freeway, every trunk road, every primary road, the harbour 
 crossings, the foreshore.  All the rivers.

Without wishing to play down your loss at all - I wouldn't want to be an
Australian OSM user at this point in time :( - I would reiterate that this
is an Australia and Poland problem. The rest of the world is largely ok, and
much of it is very good: there are many countries over 99% on the
odbl.poole.ch lists.

I can't see any way that the UMP situation in Poland is going to be
resolved, so there's no advantage delaying there; better to reset and
restart. So that leaves Australia. There are two questions: how to get
Australia remapped to an acceptable level; and what data consumers should
do. The public perception flows directly from these.

You are not going to get Australia remapped any quicker by holding off on
the changeover date. I generally disagree with Andrzej when he says it's
better to remap from a blank slate, rather than remap in-place, but in the
case of import-heavy and decliner-heavy areas like Australia and Poland,
he's probably right. Assuming you're going to be using the Australian
government data, which seems to be the general will of the .au community,
you will find it much easier to integrate that into a post-changeover
database.[1] I would gently suggest you start talking now about how you're
going to do that.

As for the data consumers, Australia does have one great advantage: you're
an island (albeit a big one!). That makes it perfectly possible for data
consumers to use pre-1st April Australia data and post-1st April for the
rest of the world - probably three lines of Osmosis or so, and a slightly
longer attribution statement. (No integration between the datasets, it's
just a collective work.) 

cheers
Richard

[1] That is, unless someone wants to revert the ABS2006 import _now_,
reimport, then replay any subsequent edits onto the reimported data... which
is certainly a possibility and which I'm slightly surprised no-one in .au is
doing.



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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-08 Thread Ian Sergeant
On 8 March 2012 20:36, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.net wrote:


 Assuming you're going to be using the Australian  government data, which
 seems to be the general will of the .au community, you will find it much
 easier to integrate that into a post-changeover database. I would gently
 suggest you start talking now about how you're going to do that.

 I don't see the Australian government boundaries as relevant.  They are
only boundaries, are generally poor quality, and many have been removed
already without being missed.

Some have been useful for adding value when they happen to align with other
geographical features (rivers, streams, railways, coastline, etc) but this
has always been a manual effort more akin to tracing than importing.  Just
importing the boundary data again is as simple as it is useless.

As for the data consumers, Australia does have one great advantage: you're
 an island (albeit a big one!). That makes it perfectly possible for data
 consumers to use pre-1st April Australia data and post-1st April for the
 rest of the world - probably three lines of Osmosis or so, and a slightly
 longer attribution statement. (No integration between the datasets, it's
 just a collective work.)


Do we really want to force this kind of workaround downstream?  To start
cutting up and merging the planet with old and new?

The transition likely won't be an overnight exercise in any event.  There's
lots of data to process.  A phased approach is certainly far preferable in
my mind to an osmosis merge.  As Nick has pointed out, there are probably
areas even within Australia that could and should transition right now with
no issue.

You can look at the raw data to see that the remapping has been successful
in Australia so far, with the pace accelerating as the tools have become
available to identify tainted data.   There isn't really evidence in that
I've seen of people holding back at this stage waiting for transition.

The main issue is resources, time and the availability of tools.  There
simply hasn't been the time since the tools have become available to
complete what can be done in many areas with the resources we have left.

I appreciate that much of the rest of the world is in better shape.  Lets
face the fact that the Australian OSM community has been splintered by this
exercise and we've lost many good people, good resources, and good maps.
I'm also a bit afraid if we stomp too hard on what's left, it may just stop
moving.

Ian.
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-08 Thread Ian Sergeant
On 8 March 2012 23:57, Andrew andrewhain...@hotmail.co.uk wrote:

 Would it be an idea to invite international mappers to remotely remap
 Australia (or Poland) by, ...

I believe I have issued such an invitation.

Initially, there are large parts of the coast and significant coastal
waterways, lakes, islands, and other features, etc that are still nonCT
that could benefit from the assistance of careful mappers from around the
world.  These are clearly visible in OSM Inspector.

There are historical and other resources to assist in remapping these (in
particular naming bays and rivers) which I can give pointers to.

For those more experienced in remapping/osm, the availability of hi-res and
well aligned maps in urban areas a few years ago in au resulted in lots of
aerial imagery based tweaks.  Roads were split extensively to add
roundabouts, traffic slands and speed zones and remapped.  These are easy
to recognise once you start looking, and there often is good data (well,
better than nothing data) to be rescued in the history.  ost transition its
going to be harder to locate the relevant change sets.

Assistance with these sort of tasks  would free up local resources to do
the local street mapping.

Ian.
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-08 Thread Steve Bennett
On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 11:57 PM, Andrew andrewhain...@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
 Would it be an idea to invite international mappers to remotely remap
 Australia (or Poland) by, for example, tracing side streets from photographs?
 It could well have a stabilising effect that avoids any concer about armchair
 mapping damaging communities.

I for one would certainly welcome that. I have no concerns about
armchair mapping at all. We have good aerial imagery in the major
cities, and in plenty of places in between.

In many cases I've worked on, major roads have sections (eg, one lane
of a two lane freeway) that will disappear, and sections that will
remain. So it would be perfectly legitimate to delete the former, and
use information from the latter (names, route numbers etc) to recreate
them, without needing any local knowledge.

Steve

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-08 Thread Steve Bennett
On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 8:36 PM, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.net wrote:
 As for the data consumers, Australia does have one great advantage: you're
 an island (albeit a big one!). That makes it perfectly possible for data
 consumers to use pre-1st April Australia data and post-1st April for the
 rest of the world - probably three lines of Osmosis or so, and a slightly
 longer attribution statement. (No integration between the datasets, it's
 just a collective work.)

Would it be possible to get the Mapnik rendering on openstreetmap.org
to do this?

Steve

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-07 Thread Frederik Ramm

Hi,

On 03/07/12 04:06, Steve Bennett wrote:

   Could someone explain exactly what will be happening on April 1?


I had initially assumed that we would take the database offline, drop 
all decliners' data, and then come back online. But it now seems that 
this might not even be required, and that it might be possible to use a 
bot to make the license change preparations in the live system.


License change preparations means that every object would be modified 
into an ODbL compatible state (worst case: deleted); after this bot has 
completed its work, the database would still be CC-BY-SA, but from that 
point on, OSMF would, at any time, be able to decree that as of now 
the database was ODbL.



Will we really be purging all data from decliners? And if so, is this
not terrible timing, given the recent, high-profile signups of
companies like foursquare?


There are many aspects to this.

1. Any timing is terrible, so why not do it now.

2. We have no obligations to Foursquare; they have made a business 
decision in the full knowledge about the upcoming license change.


3. If they, or their tile provider, MapBox, don't like what they see 
after the license change, they may choose to remain with the last 
CC-BY-SA data set for however long they want.



Given that many people are now actively remapping, is there any
prospect of pushing back the cutover deadline?


If there really are people actively remapping and our rushing through 
the license change would sabotage their work and alienate them then yes, 
we should postpone for a month or two. Sadly, here in Germany many 
people are of the opposite opinion and they say let's wait until after 
the license change, and then see what's missing and fix it. I would 
much prefer people to remap now but it seems that remapping is not for 
everyone.


The current graphs - http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/munin.html - point 
steadily downwards but if you extrapolate you'll see that they are 
unlikely to reach zero before autumn.



Is there any reason not
to?


I think that a number of people on the OSMF board - Steve and Mikel at 
least because I've spoken to them in a management team conference call 
about a month ago, but likely others too - are of the opinion that OSMF 
must be seen by the world to be reliable and be in charge; they fear 
that if OSMF should now renege on the 1st April promise they've made, 
then people might come to the conclusion that OSMF cannot be trusted. 
However they see a trustworthy OSMF as a necessary basis for dealing 
with the business community, and acquiring funding, data, or other 
support from them.


In the aforementioned management team telephone conference I said, You 
can't tell me that April 1st is success, and April 2nd is failure and 
was told that the board thinks different. (This is from memory.)


(In my eyes, it is a very bad idea for OSMF board to commit themselves 
to something which is not under their control; and we must definitely 
avoid this kind of ambitious goal-setting in the future. OSMF can set 
goals for OSMF, but OSMF must not set goals for OSM. But that's a 
discussion we can, and should, have after the license change is through.)


This doesn't mean that a postponement cannot happen; certainly board 
won't simply shut down OSM on April 1st until the bot run is complete 
just to be able to say that they met their target. But it does mean that 
a postponement would need really solid reasons which would allow those 
on the board who committed themselves to the 1st April deadline to 
save face.


If we wait another month then 5% more data can be remapped is not a 
solid reason, and neither is I'm sure Foursquare would be unhappy to 
lose a few roads in the US. These reasons are especially bad because 
they an be repeated month after month and thus could make the process 
drag on endlessly.


Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-07 Thread Jonathan Harley

On 07/03/12 08:16, Frederik Ramm wrote:

Hi,

On 03/07/12 04:06, Steve Bennett wrote:

   Given that many people are now actively remapping, is there any
prospect of pushing back the cutover deadline?


If there really are people actively remapping and our rushing through 
the license change would sabotage their work and alienate them then 
yes, we should postpone for a month or two. Sadly, here in Germany 
many people are of the opposite opinion and they say let's wait until 
after the license change, and then see what's missing and fix it. I 
would much prefer people to remap now but it seems that remapping is 
not for everyone.


The current graphs - http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/munin.html - point 
steadily downwards but if you extrapolate you'll see that they are 
unlikely to reach zero before autumn.



Is there any reason not
to?

...
If we wait another month then 5% more data can be remapped is not a 
solid reason, and neither is I'm sure Foursquare would be unhappy to 
lose a few roads in the US. These reasons are especially bad because 
they an be repeated month after month and thus could make the process 
drag on endlessly.


I agree. Another reason not to is that the looming deadline is actually 
motivating people to stop waiting for CT-undecideds to respond and do 
remapping - I know it's motivating me and other people I've talked to. 
Take away the deadline and you demotivate remappers, while also putting 
off the contribution from the wait-and-sees as Frederik says.


I suspect that we'll see the highest rates of remapping work in the few 
weeks immediately before and after the deadline. For that, we need the 
deadline.


Jonathan.

--
Dr Jonathan Harley   :Managing Director:   SpiffyMap Ltd

m...@spiffymap.com  Phone: 0845 313 8457 www.spiffymap.com
The Venture Centre, Sir William Lyons Road, Coventry CV4 7EZ, UK


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-07 Thread Nick Whitelegg
I agree. Another reason not to is that the looming deadline is actually 
motivating people to stop waiting for CT-undecideds to respond and do 
remapping - I know it's motivating me and other people I've talked to. 
Take away the deadline and you demotivate remappers, while also putting 
off the contribution from the wait-and-sees as Frederik says.

I suspect that we'll see the highest rates of remapping work in the few 
weeks immediately before and after the deadline. For that, we need the 
deadline.

I'm tending to agree now. TBH I'm not really for the licence change given the 
effect on the data... but given it's going to happen,
I'd prefer to get it all over with.

For one thing I know I personally will be more motivated to remap if gaping 
holes appear, than I might be presently... though I have done
a bit in the last couple of weeks.

Nick


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-07 Thread andrzej zaborowski
Hi,

On 7 March 2012 09:16, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:
 If there really are people actively remapping and our rushing through the
 license change would sabotage their work and alienate them then yes, we
 should postpone for a month or two. Sadly, here in Germany many people are
 of the opposite opinion and they say let's wait until after the license
 change, and then see what's missing and fix it. I would much prefer people
 to remap now but it seems that remapping is not for everyone.

I was wondering why people think that.  Even trying to put myself in
place of someone who thinks the license change is the best thing since
sliced bread I still can't see the reasons for remapping.  First of
all it costs more work than adding data from scratch and it takes
people's time away from doing actual mapping -- creating new data.  So
it's not a zero net gain operation -- i.e. we lose new contributions,
but we get to keep the same amount of work which would have been
deleted.  Rather, after the potential switch-over we will have less
data than if we kept on doing on what we always did.

Secondly mapping after the incompatible (with the LWG's risky
definition of compatibility) data has been removed by a non-person,
should be *much* preferred for the clean-ness of IP rights.  Even if
done correctly, the remapping keeps some information from the old
non-kosher data (like the fact that something worthy of featuring was
here).  But it's hard for a human to do correctly, most of the times
much more information is be copied over consciously or not.  The usual
thinking process will be what is the shortest way for me to get that
visualisation tool, considering the rules it uses, to show this object
in a lower wavelength colour?  It has only a little to do with
removing unwanted IP.  As an owner of a declined account I get
messages from people who observe those things.  It looks like after
the change, which was supposed to make OSM's legal situation cleaner,
I think it's safer for a Random Big Company to perhaps use wikimapia.

Cheers

 The current graphs - http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/munin.html - point
 steadily downwards but if you extrapolate you'll see that they are unlikely
 to reach zero before autumn.


 Is there any reason not
 to?


 I think that a number of people on the OSMF board - Steve and Mikel at least
 because I've spoken to them in a management team conference call about a
 month ago, but likely others too - are of the opinion that OSMF must be seen
 by the world to be reliable and be in charge; they fear that if OSMF should
 now renege on the 1st April promise they've made, then people might come
 to the conclusion that OSMF cannot be trusted. However they see a
 trustworthy OSMF as a necessary basis for dealing with the business
 community, and acquiring funding, data, or other support from them.

 In the aforementioned management team telephone conference I said, You
 can't tell me that April 1st is success, and April 2nd is failure and was
 told that the board thinks different. (This is from memory.)

 (In my eyes, it is a very bad idea for OSMF board to commit themselves to
 something which is not under their control; and we must definitely avoid
 this kind of ambitious goal-setting in the future. OSMF can set goals for
 OSMF, but OSMF must not set goals for OSM. But that's a discussion we can,
 and should, have after the license change is through.)

 This doesn't mean that a postponement cannot happen; certainly board won't
 simply shut down OSM on April 1st until the bot run is complete just to be
 able to say that they met their target. But it does mean that a postponement
 would need really solid reasons which would allow those on the board who
 committed themselves to the 1st April deadline to save face.

 If we wait another month then 5% more data can be remapped is not a solid
 reason, and neither is I'm sure Foursquare would be unhappy to lose a few
 roads in the US. These reasons are especially bad because they an be
 repeated month after month and thus could make the process drag on
 endlessly.

 Bye
 Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-07 Thread Chris Hill

On 07/03/12 15:45, andrzej zaborowski wrote:

I was wondering why people think that.  Even trying to put myself in
place of someone who thinks the license change is the best thing since
sliced bread I still can't see the reasons for remapping.  First of
all it costs more work than adding data from scratch and it takes
people's time away from doing actual mapping -- creating new data.  So
it's not a zero net gain operation -- i.e. we lose new contributions,
but we get to keep the same amount of work which would have been
deleted.  Rather, after the potential switch-over we will have less
data than if we kept on doing on what we always did.
I have been examining the data marked as something that will be lost in 
an area fairly close to me. Much of this was created many years ago and 
the original editor has not responded to attempts to contact them.


Much of this is based on poor-quality aerial imagery. Replacing it with 
a survey or even more recent imagery creates much higher quality data, 
not least better geometry. I have gone on to improve other work 
sometimes by adding extra detail for example roundabout flares, road 
names (from survey or other open sources) and adding otherwise missing 
roads, tracks etc.


Like-for-like replacement might not be useful, but much of this is a 
positive improvement and worthwhile in its own right. I might not have 
looked at some of these areas without the process of licence change. I 
will now be reviewing the whole area (northern Lincolnshire, UK) over 
the next few months and I expect to find lots of potential improvements, 
just like anywhere else.


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-07 Thread andrzej zaborowski
On 7 March 2012 16:57, Chris Hill o...@raggedred.net wrote:
 On 07/03/12 15:45, andrzej zaborowski wrote:

 I was wondering why people think that.  Even trying to put myself in
 place of someone who thinks the license change is the best thing since
 sliced bread I still can't see the reasons for remapping.  First of
 all it costs more work than adding data from scratch and it takes
 people's time away from doing actual mapping -- creating new data.  So
 it's not a zero net gain operation -- i.e. we lose new contributions,
 but we get to keep the same amount of work which would have been
 deleted.  Rather, after the potential switch-over we will have less
 data than if we kept on doing on what we always did.

 I have been examining the data marked as something that will be lost in an
 area fairly close to me. Much of this was created many years ago and the
 original editor has not responded to attempts to contact them.

 Much of this is based on poor-quality aerial imagery. Replacing it with a
 survey or even more recent imagery creates much higher quality data, not
 least better geometry. I have gone on to improve other work sometimes by
 adding extra detail for example roundabout flares, road names (from survey
 or other open sources) and adding otherwise missing roads, tracks etc.

 Like-for-like replacement might not be useful, but much of this is a
 positive improvement and worthwhile in its own right. I might not have
 looked at some of these areas without the process of licence change. I will
 now be reviewing the whole area (northern Lincolnshire, UK) over the next
 few months and I expect to find lots of potential improvements, just like
 anywhere else.

Those are useful improvements, I'm not saying they aren't.  But you
did have to manually delete the existing data, something that is
expected to be done by a bot anyway.  You may have spent as little as
1% of the mapping time on it, but it is still a slight overhead.
Likely it was higher if you had to investigate the situation, install
an editor plugin and so on.

So if those deletions were done automatically you could have added
those same details and a hypothetical 0.01 more.  Assuming that there
are other things to add to OSM (and I've not yet been to a place where
there weren't, maybe except one neighbourhood in Dublin), remapping
before the cut-off date can at best have a close to zero negative
result.

Cheers

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-07 Thread Ian Sergeant
Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote on 08/03/2012 10:11:14 AM:

 So forgive me if I cannot see any test case in the Foursquare issue,
 and I would be surprised if anyone else did! Plus, as I and others have
 said, they're grown-ups and they must have been aware of the looming
change.

This isn't about Foursquare the company.  The Foursquare community is large
and all about geography.  (By comparison, geography is incidental to the
White House, and German Courts).

This is about bad news in the hands of the most connected of people.  These
are people who if they hate it will tweet it, facebook it, blog it, and
re-post it.   This will be the first contact with OSM for millions, and the
first time many millions more hear about it.  It really is in the interest
of our project that the experience for that many people be as positive as
we can practically achieve.

Secondly, given it now looks like the act can be done live, I see no harm
in working with the local communities to progressively clean the database
in areas where at least the major linking roads are in place first, without
losing the deadline or the imperative.

Maybe we achieve this by having a timetable that starts with the most
complete areas and works down the list, thereby giving a month or so
extension to those countries at the bottom?  That way, we don't lose the
deadline, we can go easy on the disc heads, and still grant some sort of
extension to those who have more work to do?

Ian.
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-07 Thread Steve Bennett
On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Ian Sergeant inas66+...@gmail.com wrote:
 This is about bad news in the hands of the most connected of people.  These
 are people who if they hate it will tweet it, facebook it, blog it, and
 re-post it.   This will be the first contact with OSM for millions, and the
 first time many millions more hear about it.  It really is in the interest
 of our project that the experience for that many people be as positive as we
 can practically achieve.

Well said.

 Maybe we achieve this by having a timetable that starts with the most
 complete areas and works down the list, thereby giving a month or so
 extension to those countries at the bottom?  That way, we don't lose the
 deadline, we can go easy on the disc heads, and still grant some sort of
 extension to those who have more work to do?

If this is possible, this would be great. I would immediately request
an extension of 3 months for Australian data. Our situation is, as
noted, amongst the worst: much of the major core data was contributed
by very active mappers who eventually declined the CTs, and left the
community. So not only do we have a bigger hole than most communities,
but we have less people to repair the hole.

Steve

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-07 Thread Nick Hocking
The presence of non compliant data in our database can only harm
the community and thereby the project.

The longer it stays there the more harm is being done to the
community/project.

We should be trying to minimise the damage to OSM and the only way
to do this is to.

Remap madly until April 1st then map madly after that to fill in any
important holes. Once this is done then we can concentrate on
mapping new areas and adding more value to our current dataset.
For these reasons, slipping the April 1st deadline would result
in more damage to the project than adhereing to it.

PS - It's been well understood that in Australia, remapping all the
decliner edits (both traced imported and surveyed) will take a
couple of years. I don't understand why some people are  now
starting to panic.  Maybe it's just that time of month again where
we have to rehash the licence debate for the n+1th time.

Nick
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-07 Thread Ian Sergeant
On 8 March 2012 13:50, Nick Hocking nick.hock...@gmail.com wrote:

 The presence of non compliant data in our database can only harm
 the community and thereby the project.

...

I don't understand why some people are  now
 starting to panic.  Maybe it's just that time of month again where
 we have to rehash the licence debate for the n+1th time.


Please, lets not confuse the timing issue with the licence debate.
Different issues entirely.   I appreciate that every time this discussion
is raised there are the naysayers that jump in.  Let's just apply the
appropriate filter and focus on the issue at hand.

It has always been a matter of finding the correct balance between the
damage being done to the community by having non-compliant data, and the
damage done to our data consumers, who we also owe a duty to.   If we
weren't trying to find this balance, we could have just gone ahead and
removed the data in April last year.   In some parts of the map, I'm
confident that balance has been reached.  I'm keener than anyone to see any
end to the red and green lines, and go back to normal mapping.

However, if the transition happened today in Sydney,  we would lose every
freeway, every trunk road, every primary road, the harbour crossings, the
foreshore.  All the rivers.  We'll lose at least 50 entire suburbs to the
very last street and their place names.  We'll lose railways, stations,
ferry wharfs and routes.  We'll lose large chunks of the regional cycle
networks.  This dataset will be completely, utterly, and entirely unusable
by anyone for any purpose.

Progress in remapping is being made.  It is purposeful and effective, but
takes time.

We need the right balance to set the timing, and from my perspective I just
can't see how we can reach that point in this area by April 1 -   unless
several additional committed volunteers join the effort full time in the
next week.  We've tried our best to do it in time, but we've not
succeeded.  There needs to be a different timing or a different approach.

I defy anyone to run OSM Inspector over the Sydney area and say we have the
right timing to go now.

I therefore repeat my suggestion that we adopt a phased approach over a
couple of months, working from the most complete areas to the least.  There
are other risk-management benefits to this approach beyond giving an
extension to the less well developed areas.  Still a deadline, still an
imperative, just the extra time we need with the tools that we now have to
make sure that a very basic usable dataset exists for our consumers on the
transition day.

Ian.
P.S. Anybody who has finished mapping in their area, and is twiddling their
thumbs waiting for the transition, we have many tens of thousands of
kilometres of rivers, lakes, coastline, long distance railways, etc in
Australia that are amenable to aerial remapping!  Come visit!
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[OSM-legal-talk] What happens on April 1?

2012-03-06 Thread Steve Bennett
Hi all,
  Could someone explain exactly what will be happening on April 1?
Will we really be purging all data from decliners? And if so, is this
not terrible timing, given the recent, high-profile signups of
companies like foursquare?

Given that many people are now actively remapping, is there any
prospect of pushing back the cutover deadline? Is there any reason not
to? Why do we want to reveal a map with huge holes in it to the world,
rather than doing the remapping privately, to minimise disruption to
data consumers?

Steve
(I previously asked a version of this question on talk).

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