On Thu, 2008-12-11 at 15:02 -0500, Mepham, Michael wrote: > My first question has to be “Why are you doing this?”. I have spent > some time looking through the OSM web site and I understand the > rational for building street maps where none exist or at least are not > generally available but that is not the case here. I know of at least > two other complete downloads of the GeoBase data for redistribution > but still do not fully understand the reasons for replication / > duplication.
The basic reason is that we need to be able to edit it. We can't simply put data back into GeoBase, so we need a copy on which to work. Is there a way we even could get changes back to the "owners" of the data? I think the core of it is that OpenStreetmap isn't your normal user. We don't want to just take the data and put it on a map, or figure out where all the residents in an area live. One of our core goals is to be able to update and change the map. > Secondly – How does this group expect maintenance to work? When the > data suppliers pass updates to the GeoBase portal team and those > updates are made available then GeoBase and OSM will be out of sync. > What are the expectations on how or when they will be brought back > into sync? For the US TIGER data, we are simply diverging. There is no plan that I know of, and relatively little need right now, to bring things back into sync. It is just a huge problem with no easy solutions. The easiest solution that I see is what we're doing now: leave the data, and let the users improve it, just like the rest of the world. These huge government databases have, in effect, been a jump start for OSM. But, I'm afraid they're a one-time thing. -- Dave _______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
