Re: [OSM-talk] Open sourcing of POI pictures for OSM App/STAPPZ - Feedback and ideas wanted

[Kathleen Lu]

Hi Tim,
Your app and what you hope to do with it both sound interesting. I hope you
are successful.
Here's some more information on the open licensing front to consider:
 - In order to have the legal rights necessary to "open" the material your
users contributed, you would likely needed to have gotten a perpetual
irrevocable royalty-free license with an unlimited right to sublicense (not
limited to only your affiliates, etc), or an assignment, though the latter
is far more than needed.
 - But would use of the photos/text outside of the STAPPZ app be consistent
with your users' expectations for their photos/text? If no, then even if
you can legally do it you may be passing an unwelcome burden to an open
community.
 - What open license would you provide the photos/text under? CC-BY is a
common one for photos, though it is not inherently compatible with ODbL
(the license for OSM). There is however a waiver template that makes CC-BY
it compatible with ODbL:
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2017/03/17/use-of-cc-by-data/
There is the separate issue with CC-BY that users are supposed to attribute
the author. Do your users expect/want their names to be attributed to the
photos if they are used outside the App? This may raise data privacy issues
a well (especially with GDPR coming into enforcement).
 - As for open source of the code, you'll have a choice between a
permissive license (e.g. MIT, BSD, ISC, DWTFYW) or a copyleft license (e.g.
GPL, LGPL) or something in between (MPL, Apache). Permissive licenses make
it easier for someone else to take over the project, though there is the
possibility that they will take it in a direction you do not like (e.g.,
build a new version but not open the code to the new version). Copyleft
licenses are intended to guard against this, but most companies do not like
working with copyleft code and many ban it, so there would be a smaller
pool of potential interest.
You can see OSMF's current open source projects here:
https://github.com/openstreetmap. The licenses currently used are ISC, BSD,
DWTFYW, Apache 2.0, and GPL.
Best of luck!
-Kathleen


On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 2:45 PM Tobias Knerr  wrote:

> Hi Tim,
>
> On 11.05.2018 17:19, Tim Frey wrote:
> > Out of this, we consider, heavily, to “open source” the licensing of the
> > user created STAPPZ content for the OSM community. In addition, we also
> > consider to open source the backend of STAPPZ and the IOS and Android
> > app to make a community project out of it.
>
> I'm going to split this reply into two parts: About the content, and
> about the software itself.
>
>
> As for the content, a lot depends on if you can publish the images under
> the terms of an open license.¹ That's a legal question, but probably
> also a bit of a social one (i.e. would this be in line with what the
> creators expected when they shared their images on your app, or would
> they be unpleasantly surprised/unhappy about this).
>
> Assuming the answer is that yes, you can publish them, the next question
> is what to do with the images. OSM does not currently have an image
> hosting platform, so if we're only talking about contributing the
> images, they would need to be donated to a separate platform.
>
> The obvious recipient for such an image donation would be Wikimedia
> Commons, as they're the most popular repository for open-licensed media.
> Images on Commons can be linked with OpenStreetMap POIs² and are used as
> such by some OSM-based maps. Of course, they're also used by Wikipedia
> and its sister projects – notably Wikitravel, which is a crowdsourced
> travel guide (although much closer to the traditional book format than
> your project).
>
> A caveat is that such a donation would likely require some manual effort
> to filter out lower-quality pictures or duplicates, and to add
> meaningful descriptions. Still, assuming the legalities work out, it
> seems feasible to donate the images and would be a generous contribution
> to the open content ecosystem.
>
>
> Ok, so let's talk about the app and backend a bit. I'm not sure how
> familiar you are with OSM's organizational model, but as a rule we're
> very decentralized – even core components of OSM are being developed as
> mostly independent Open Source projects. For you, this means that even
> if there's community interest, any re-use of your project would probably
> still start out with _you_ spearheading its development, re-imagining it
> as something you believe fits a need of the OSM community, and trying to
> gain mindshare in the OSM contributor and developer community. Of
> course, this may be at odds with your goal to focus on other projects.
>
> If this does not discourage you, though, let's consider what needs the
> software could serve. I don't have any amazing ideas to offer, but I
> could see two basic roles in the OSM ecosystem an image platform might
> potentially be able to fill. Broadly speaking:
> * Images could be used internally by OSM contributors as a data source
> for ma

Re: [OSM-talk] Open sourcing of POI pictures for OSM App/STAPPZ - Feedback and ideas wanted

[Tobias Knerr]

Hi Tim,

On 11.05.2018 17:19, Tim Frey wrote:
> Out of this, we consider, heavily, to “open source” the licensing of the
> user created STAPPZ content for the OSM community. In addition, we also
> consider to open source the backend of STAPPZ and the IOS and Android
> app to make a community project out of it.

I'm going to split this reply into two parts: About the content, and
about the software itself.


As for the content, a lot depends on if you can publish the images under
the terms of an open license.¹ That's a legal question, but probably
also a bit of a social one (i.e. would this be in line with what the
creators expected when they shared their images on your app, or would
they be unpleasantly surprised/unhappy about this).

Assuming the answer is that yes, you can publish them, the next question
is what to do with the images. OSM does not currently have an image
hosting platform, so if we're only talking about contributing the
images, they would need to be donated to a separate platform.

The obvious recipient for such an image donation would be Wikimedia
Commons, as they're the most popular repository for open-licensed media.
Images on Commons can be linked with OpenStreetMap POIs² and are used as
such by some OSM-based maps. Of course, they're also used by Wikipedia
and its sister projects – notably Wikitravel, which is a crowdsourced
travel guide (although much closer to the traditional book format than
your project).

A caveat is that such a donation would likely require some manual effort
to filter out lower-quality pictures or duplicates, and to add
meaningful descriptions. Still, assuming the legalities work out, it
seems feasible to donate the images and would be a generous contribution
to the open content ecosystem.


Ok, so let's talk about the app and backend a bit. I'm not sure how
familiar you are with OSM's organizational model, but as a rule we're
very decentralized – even core components of OSM are being developed as
mostly independent Open Source projects. For you, this means that even
if there's community interest, any re-use of your project would probably
still start out with _you_ spearheading its development, re-imagining it
as something you believe fits a need of the OSM community, and trying to
gain mindshare in the OSM contributor and developer community. Of
course, this may be at odds with your goal to focus on other projects.

If this does not discourage you, though, let's consider what needs the
software could serve. I don't have any amazing ideas to offer, but I
could see two basic roles in the OSM ecosystem an image platform might
potentially be able to fill. Broadly speaking:
* Images could be used internally by OSM contributors as a data source
for mapping in addition to sources as aerial imagery and GPS tracks.
* Images could be displayed by user-facing sites and apps alongside OSM
data. (I believe this is what you were getting at with your Google Maps
comparison.)

The former use case is already partially covered by
Mapillary/OpenStreetCam, so the question is if there's enough of a niche
left for another app.

The latter seems more ambitious. As I mentioned before, mappers are
currently using tags like image=* with links to external platforms to
add images to OSM POI. Those links can technically point anywhere,
although Wikimedia Commons currently appears to be the most popular
platform to host the images. Inviting users (including non-mappers) to
easily contribute images to a dedicated, OSM-affiliated platform might
be a worthwhile cause. Not sure how well this fits your platform's
existing social features, though.

Tobias


¹ Typically one of the open CC licenses: CC0, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA.
² Using http://wiki.osm.org/Key:image
or http://wiki.osm.org/Key:wikimedia_commons

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[OSM-talk] Overpass API 0.7.55

[Roland Olbricht]

Dear all,

A new release of Overpass API is now available, version 0.7.55.

The core feature of this version are geometries for derived objects: We 
tell and have told since a long time to people who want to mechanical 
edit the database that they should rewrite the data on the client side. 
The long term goal for Overpass API is that we could just provide to 
such people a link through which they can consume rewritten data 
accordingly to their respective needs. With geometry on derived 
elements, we are one step closer to do so.


Beside that, further evaluators have been added and some existing have 
got improvements. The set of control structures known from full-scale 
programming languages are now available with its semantics adapted to 
the needs of OSM queries.


The details will be presented in a series of blog posts on 
https://dev.overpass-api.de/blog/ like for the previous version.


Best regards,

Roland

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Re: [OSM-talk] Open sourcing of POI pictures for OSM App/STAPPZ - Feedback and ideas wanted

[Tim Frey]

Hello Milo,

 

thanks a lot for your long and detailed feedback. I appreciate that a lot.

 

The use cases you described with waste, hazards and so on are interesting – for 
such cases, we implemented a first version to tag posts… so in theory it would 
be possible with the current API.

My key thought is: How and where do we get more users who tell the stories and 
get started with this? Someone has suggestions?

 

The POI database – my original key thought was to link the OSM POIs like 
fountains, restaurants – barely everything to descriptions and pictures to 
provide the most value added to the community.
I’m not certain if this is what you meant by sustainable development goals. 
Therefore, please elaborate if I got this right?

Best
Tim

 

Von: Milo van der Linden  
Gesendet: Sonntag, 13. Mai 2018 13:43
An: Tim Frey 
Cc: OSM Talk 
Betreff: Re: [OSM-talk] Open sourcing of POI pictures for OSM App/STAPPZ - 
Feedback and ideas wanted

 

Hello Tim,

thank you for the broad explanation of your product!

I like the concept and me have some particular use cases for which we now use 
Flickr. I would love to have an alternative to that which could be maintained 
by a community that is closely related to OpenStreetMap. My usecases are 
particular for non-google-dominated areas; where users not only enter travel 
pictures; but also pictures related to particular causes; for instance waste, 
standing water, hazards and more. They are users which are not so tech-savvy 
but have an urgent need to tell "a story" to government, officials, police or 
other matters of public interest.

So a POI database with the possibility to enter pictures and information that 
relate to the Sustainable Development Goals would be awesome. I would love to 
collaborate on such a project.

Kind regards

Milo

 

 

2018-05-11 17:19 GMT+02:00 Tim Frey <  
tim.f...@iunera.com>:

Greetings OSM community,

 

my name is Tim and I’m one of the creators of the STAPPZ app. We want feedback 
from the community about our open sourcing plan of the STAPPZ app content.

 

What is STAPPZ: 

STAPPZ is in short an app and a server backend application. The original idea 
was to create crowdsourced version of an insider travel guide, where each user 
can contribute content.

That means, you open the app and you post some pictures and a text at a 
geolocation and when you are online, then the content is uploaded to the server 
and is available on a webmap. This way, you can create a personal travel diary 
map. Our original plan was to extend STAPPZ step by step to create not only 
travel guides, but to also add pictures of POIs

Example:   
https://maps.stappz.com/region/sicilia 

Android App demo video:   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDBh-VrU2Ig 

Explanation slides:  

 
https://de.slideshare.net/TimFrey2/travel-guides-are-old-news-being-a-local-insider-everywhere-is-today
 

Background:

We managed to get featured with the app at conferences and in a lot of 
magazines (e.g. Computer Bild, Chip) and got over 10k downloads for Android, 
but, frankly speaking, we did not get mass adaption to create a sustainable 
ecosystem. Therefore, we as company had to focus on other projects to earn 
money for living ☹ . 

 

Feedback wanted:

We poured a lot of our personal tears and sweat in coding and marketing STAPPZ 
and today we think that STAPPZ could be used to create picture POI content for 
OSM. We see that need in special, because google maps is offering more and more 
picture POI content from users, and I, personally, do not know such an open 
datapod for open streetmap.

Out of this, we consider, heavily, to “open source” the licensing of the user 
created STAPPZ content for the OSM community. In addition, we also consider to 
open source the backend of STAPPZ and the IOS and Android app to make a 
community project out of it. However, we are a very small company and we cannot 
do that completely alone, we will need help and advice from the community. 

 

Technical details:

Internally, in the app and the backend, we use only OSM data and maps to ensure 
not being bound to legal contracts to google. The Android version is far more 
developed than the IOS version and has complete offline and caching 
functionality to allow posting of pictures form the gallery and to position the 
pictures on a map. Currently, the maps part of the app does not work for 
Android, but we want to enable it as soon as we have time. 

STAPPZ supports gallery uploads with exif data, cached content and many more 
things – if you got questions please ask.

 

Questions to the community:

What do you think about open sourcing the content, the app and so on? Do you 
see a value added for the OSM community?
Would you support the project to open source it?

D