Hi, I am a complete outsider regarding the licensing debate (and, to be honest, to the whole OSM project... I barely started mapping a few hiking trails).
That being said, here is the main thing I wonder about : **Is the license change a real choice or a kind of legal obligation ?** The reason I ask is because, by looking at this thread, I feel like some people view it as important, and others see how depressing it is for the mapping community... But do we have the choice ? If the move is for pure theoretical, GNU/Stallman-like ideology, then it is likely to create way more damage than it would save. However, if the move is about saving the project from a legal perspective, then it's probably better to start tackling the issue now rather than having a court shut down the project 5 years from now when most of the planet is mapped... regards, Sami Dalouche On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 03:46 +1000, John Smith wrote: > On 19 July 2010 03:36, SteveC <[email protected]> wrote: > > Why? Because the project is growing very fast and attracting more data all > > the time. If Google or Nearmap don't want to play ball that's fine - just > > look at the hundreds of other companies and organisations that do, like > > Bing and MapQuest's announcements at SOTM for example. > > Nearmap isn't dictating any terms, other than you can only use their > data under a share alike license so no need to lump them in with > Google. However I have a fairly good idea how much information has > been added in regional areas that wouldn't exist otherwise. > > > I agree it might be bad in the short term that we lose some aerial imagery > > (but I posit that would only happen because you give nearmap the impression > > that the community will do whatever they say, if you ask them to join us > > from the position that this is the direction we're going, I posit they > > would be more positive). But in the longer term I guarantee we'll have lots > > of other sources of data and imagery. It will be a temporary setback, even > > if it happens. > > You go on and on about how if 50% disappear wait a short time and > it'll magically appear within a short period of time, I call BS, if > the tiger data was dumped from OSM how long exactly would it take to > regather it? How demoralising would it be on the people that fixed up > the tiger data? Combined with people that don't respond or don't agree > it would set the Aussie community back to the stone age effectively, > and it will actively turn away new contributors because they won't > want the same thing to happen to their efforts. > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
