Hi, > > Is it relevant to us? > > Surely it's highly relevant to your assertion that we would build a > strong community around OSM if it was PD?
I thought OJW was not talking about communities but about corporations. Which generally have a bad track record of working for free (perhaps because they have no 'spare time'?) > The fact that none has formed around an existing large body of > geodata ripe for improvement doesn't help your case. I suspect there will be many existing large bodies of geodata without a community, and as many with one, and the reasons behind that very diverse. Thankfully crschmidt has pointed out an example that "doesn't help your case". As regards TIGER specifically, my belief is that no community has formed around that because what you get in PD is not the "master database" but just something compiled by the government, and they have promised periodic re-issues of updated information. Whatever changes your community makes, they will not be contained in the next government release, and you either have to "fork off" and ignore them, or forever try and try to filter out the "new stuff" from the next release and merge that with what you have. I think that if the data had been not "published" PD but actually "disowned" by the government (as in: this is what we have and we're not going to work with this any more) then the situation would have been wholly different. But that's pure speculation - as is the idea that no community has formed because it was PD rather than copyleft. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
