Lan Barnes wrote:
On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 11:23:48AM -0800, Tracy R Reed wrote:
Michael O'Keefe wrote:
Actually it's the opposite.
Digital maps are EXTREMELY hard to come by, BECOZ of the (handheld) GPS
market. They pay a LOT for those maps. It's why Garmin (for example) is
I think you misunderstand. I understand that Garmin et al protect their
maps. I mean that it should be possible to generate our own public
domain map. There needs to be a mapping project. Someone with some GIS
knowledge needs to set up a database whereby we can all note the GPS
coordinates of all our streets and landmarks and everything that anyone
would care about and put it into a database which can be used to
generate maps.
To me, copyrighting maps is like patenting the genome. The surface of
the world is what it is. Additionally, we've all already paid for the
satellite photos through our taxes.
Considering that at least only a couple of years ago, virtually all map
software publishers' source of U.S. maps was the U.S. Government (as in
Bureau of the Census and USGS) I guess I'm out of date as to why it's
now hard to get map data.
As Paul already pointed out, and which I can verify, having worked with
him on a mapping software project, government maps are free for the
download (or at a modest fee if you want it on specific media).
What the mapping program publishers do (or did) is add some other
database functionality and things like GPS lookups and photo overlays.
Why aren't public domain maps good enough? And if they are, why don't we
have Linux mapping software? I don't know the answer to the first
question (I assume they are), and my answer to the second is that no one
has sufficient motivation to write it.
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
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