2009/12/11 Shalabh <[email protected]>: > Ok, heres a question I have been meaning to ask for long. What is the big > deal if the big, bad G takes a chunk of data from OSM and uses it? Do I > care? No. If anything, I would be happy that we created something worthy to > be used by a corporation. As long as they dont restrict me from using data > on OSM, which they in no way cant, I dont have a problem. If they dont 'give > back' to the community, big deal!!
It is a big deal to me, it's some kind of dream of a better world where practically all geospatial data (also software if you're a FOSS programmer) has to be free if you want to tap into the huge knowledge base all humanity has built till now. You can already see big closed software companies stay behind because they can't use my favourite GPL-licensed library, they have to reimplement everything from scratch while everyone else uses the free version and adds their own creations to this ever-growing base. It's a virus. Google has a lot of data and are good at getting more, be it official or crowdsourced. It would be a huge loss for the collective knowledge of everyone if this data escapes the virus. I can't afford that loss, maybe you can. Cheers _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
