Richard Fairhurst <rich...@systemed.net> writes: > Hi all, > > You might remember that back in March I wondered whether we could get > access to the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy's data, which they've given > to Google: > > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2019-March/019266.html > > Helpful people on this list followed that up with RTC (thank > you!). Finally the answer has come back and it's no. The data is > apparently "free as in Google" - sadly RTC aren't interested in having > their trails appear in basically every single cycling app which uses > OSM data. > > (In completely unconnected news, I note that RTC currently sells > "TrailLink Unlimited" mapping for $29.99/year.)
Thanks for pushing on this and telling us what the results were. One wonders how RTC squares this decision with their legal obligation to act in the public interest. Not sharing data at all to get "related income" to fund their operation is one thing, but sharing with Google while not with OSM seems hard to defend. My impression is that for many of the US rail trails, perhaps most of them, RTC has no real involvement (in ownership or construction), so "their trails" is perhaps "the set of trails that are in their database". Agreed that making OSM the better database is the only good trail forward. _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
