On Sun, Dec 30, 2007 at 02:55:01AM +0000, Yann wrote: > Hello, > > There was a guy from google at SOTM so I assume we did, but just to make > sure: did we actually asked google if we could use their imagery? It's just > so much better than the one yahoo provides...
I've personally sent emails to the best contact addresses I could find for the following: * Google Maps * Microsoft Virtual Earth * Digital Globe * Several other providers gleaned from the maps copyright lines at the time Not a single one of them ever responded. (Not even with a no.) Keep in mind that Google Maps is not a single imagery source: instead, there are hundreds of different sources, each with slightly different permissions as to what they can and can't do. (This is why, for example, the road maps served at maps.google.com and the road maps served via the Google Maps API are different -- the former is a combination of NavTeq and TelaAtlas, the latter is TelaAtlas only -- or at least was for a time.) It is unlikely that *all* of the imagery providers would accept reuse of their imagery for OSM's purposes, and probably similarly unlikely that Google would be able to set up a secondary worldwide satellite map cache with data that they could share. So there are unique problems in that case that Yahoo *doesn't* have -- using only a single imagery provider (combined with free data in many cases in the US). Additionally, comments from Google Maps team members have indicated to me that there are likely only two answers you would ever get out of Google Legal: "No", or no answer at all. (Which is clearly not the same thing as yes!) Regards, -- Christopher Schmidt MetaCarta _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
