Hi all, In response to my request yesterday:
*I write on behalf of a team preparing to create an app (free as in beer aswell as in speech) which will help users find WiFi hotspots and also reviewthem or report new ones. We already have some data-sets which appear to bepublic-domain, but these things keep changing hence our intention to havereal-time crowdsourcing.Initially we thought of using both Google Maps and OSM but on closerinvestigation, discovered that above a minimal level of use, Google APIcosts some dollars, so we discarded that idea.None of us has done this kind of thing before so we are hoping for guidanceand assistance. I found your addresses in the OSM Import Guidelines page.* I got the following reply from Greg Troxel (reprinted with permission): "Presumably you have seen https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:internet_access and the rejected proprosal https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Proposed_features/WiFi_Zone/Hotspot&oldid=868868 "It's good that you are thinking about licensing from the beginning. "The standard opinion in OSM is that reviews don't belong in the database. But public hotspots seem to be viewed as appropriate. "Google Maps also tends to allow only tile viewing, not access to vector data. "The big problem with users editing data is ensuring that the edits are aligned with existing data. For people who learn to use the editing tools and look at the whole db near the hotspot, this works, but it's a huge barrier to entry. The other extreme is a "add this hotspot" button in an app that takes lat/lon and hotspot info and just adds a node to OSM without checking if it's there - which of course isn't ok. In between there is some degree of looking for existing nearish hotspots and verifying if the new one is the same or not, and doing that as automatically as possible while causing acceptably little trouble. This is going to be the hard part of your project technically. "I can see two approaches to what you want to do. One option is to make a database of hotspots separate from OSM, with lat/lon for each. Or perhaps also a reference to an object in OSM. Then you can display that on an OSM basemap. The db could have information about ssid, bssid, channel, etc., which is beyond what probably belongs in OSM. editing the db is really just about making sure there isn't an existing object for the hotspot. Avoiding dups should be relatively easy. "The other is to maintain the main data for a hotspot in OSM, adding the internet_access=wlan tag to (probably) an existing object. Again you may wish to maintain some data that is too detailed for OSM, and associate that with the OSM object. This has the advantage that changes by OSM editors are reflected in your app's data, and your app's edits will help others. You will need to ensure that contributions from your user's meet the Contributor Terms, both in not violating existing rights and granting adequate rights. One approach might be that the app only adds hotspots it is observing, so the users have first-party data, and to get them to agree that contributions are PD. "With this second approach, the hard part will be to find the right object in OSM to modify, but if the facility with the wifi is mapped, that may be easy as multiple choice of nearby, and if not, adding a node with just the internet_access=wlan tag is arguably reasonable. "You are writing to imports, but to me the user-contributed data does not feel like an import. It's a different kind of change to the OSM db that needs extra scrutiny (the structure, not each edit), though. "You mention an existing database. The import norms (see the wiki) are that you post the actual data, the license, scripts to transform it to OSM changesets, and all other info about what you are proposing to do. Pay extra attention to how hotspot info will be merged into existing OSM objects, so tha the resulting data is no messier than humans would create. "An alternative is to have the app search the union of OSM and the other datasets, and to offer to upload a point to OSM, with human choosing help, when the user is actually observing it." My reply: Yes, the person who directed us to OSM gave us the tag Greg supplied. Also, I'd gathered that a tag for a mere network area was unavailable, but our datasets have names of coffeeshops etc. Concerning the issue of reviews and quality control, we have considered some sort of multi-stage process of verification. But it's all in the air; Greg's comments are helpful. I hereby invite further input from ZA. Thanks, Michael.
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