Thank you for your response Serge! This is a very good outline and you are very kind to have given me this kind of walk through. I have read through the docs about each part you outlined for me and have some more questions..
"If you've signed up recently, you've accepted the new Contributor Terms" So I believe this means that I should work under OSM's future license policy, even though they have not yet made the crossover? Or do I work under the current terms for now and then change everything later? Sorry for asking what may seem like dumb questions, but I want to be really sure about this :) "If you understand OSM, then you know how we use tags to classify features." My data is in a GIS database. I looked at the tagging section of the docs. The way I understood it is that I have to change my database to reflect the tags? I'm not really sure since I have a lot of columns with entries such as place_name, lon, lat, geom, etc. Another question about this is that I am working in the U.S., but I would be importing data for a region in an another country. Do I follow the tagging system of the U.S. or do I follow that of the country I am importing for? What if that country has different tagging systems for different regions and none listed for the region of my interest? As for importing data, I saw it mentioned somewhere that there is a test database for OSM that I can work with to ensure my actual import goes right. Is this so? Other than that is there a place I can show my .osm files for moderation and checked by an OSM team or professionals alike that will ensure me that my pending import data will benefit OSM? Also I saw that you said that mass data imports are not favored. What constitutes as a "mass import" as opposed a more normal/manageable one? As for the XML/.osm format, isn't there a tool from the FWTools suite, something like ogr2osm that will correctly convert my GIS to .osm? I am guessing that even with such a tool, that I might have to edit/clean-up the .osm files a bit, but I assume there has to be many tools out there to do the bulk of the conversion... I truly appreciate all your kind help and assistance with this. I don't know what I would do if it wasn't for you guys :) Thanks, elshae On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Serge Wroclawski <[email protected]>wrote: > On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 10:42 AM, IT Intern <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > This was originally posted here: > > http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=10817 > > Hi, and welcome to OSM! > > There's a large split in the people who use the forums vs the lists. I'm > biased. > > The other resources for OSM are the Wiki (wiki.openstreetmap.org) and > help.openstreetmap.org. > > help.osm has a lot of question similar to yours, and this question > comes up a lot, so I'm going to apologise if this answer seems terse, > there's just a fairly large amount of information that I need to give > you to answer it. > > > > I apologize in advance if the answer to my question is blatant from the > docs, but as far as I can see there seems to be no way to contribute GIS > data to OSM. > > It depends what you mean by contribute. I'm going to assume you mean > "Put data you and others have collected into OSM" > > > I am working on a project making an interactive map and the foundation > which I work for has a lot of data which they have collected (mostly from > gazetteers). We figured since OSM is providing us with their lovely base > maps from the API, we want to give back to them by contributing our data. > However, our data is mainly in a PostGIS database. Is there anyway to > import this data to OSM? I appreciate all and any advice you may offer me > > For my own sanity, I'll break the process down into several parts: > > License, Tagging, the Import Process in General, and Technology > > 1. License > > First, and foremost, any data that goes into OSM must be compatible > with the OSM license, which is currently in a transition period. If > you've signed up recently, you've accepted the new Contributor Terms. > > The issue is that you have to be sure that your organisation is okay > with these terms, that you have the proper authorisation to add the > data into our dataset, etc. > > There are lots of resources on the wiki, and lists to help with this, > so I won't go too far into the process. > > 2. Tagging > > You didn't mention what kind of data you have. If you understand OSM, > then you know how we use tags to classify features. Your data will > need to be added in using tags that our system understands, or if it's > an odd case where the data is unlike anything we already have, we'd > need to work out a new tagging system for it. But the later is very > unlikely. > > If you have questions about this, lots of people will be happy to help > you, but the best resource is the wiki. > > 3. Imports in General > > As a general rule, OSM doesn't like mass data imports, for lots of > reasons. There are exceptions, people do imports, and some are fine, > but generally the community doesn't like them, and usually it has to > do with poor execution, and overlapping data. > > For example, let's say you have road data that you want to add to OSM. > > Will your import process take in to account roads that are already in > the database? If so, what strategy will you use for deciding which > data is correct? Will you look at the date of collection? Will you > always blow the existing OSM data away, will you always blow your data > away? > > And if you do add roads, will they route properly with existing OSM > data (ie will they be topologically consistent with the existing > dataset?). And so on... > > It's a non-trivial matter, and the process needs to be customised for > each dataset. > > We can go into more depth about this, but look at the wiki for > "import" and "imports" and you'll see lots of existing information. > > 4. Technology > > If your data is in PostGIS now, it shouldn't be too hard to write a > script that extracts the features and makes it available in the OSM > XML format, ready to be consumed by the API. > > Are you familiar with the XML format and the API? If not, they're > referenced in the wiki and or we can give you a link. > > - Serge >
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