On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 8:55 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> The situation is sufficient for me to use Bing imagery for tracing. I'm not
> looking at the legal side of it, I'm just looking at the size of the PR
> disaster should Microsoft attempt to backtrack in any way.
>
> PR is more important than legal. As most people on this list know, with
> CC-BY-SA being next to invalid for Geodata in the US, any of the big US
> players could long have taken our data an run. Why haven't they? Because
> they fear a PR disaster.
I suppose I don't mind if a license is technically invalid because of
some obscure legal reason, I just think that the intent needs to be
there, publicly, officially, and clearly stated on what they are okay
with and what they aren't. I don't think the Bing people have clearly
stated what they consider acceptable and what they don't.
Another potential problem I see with Bing is, as far as I could tell,
this grant is only for OpenStreetMap. Does their permission extend to
other people who then use the OSM database? I feel this needs to be
made clear.
>
> But luckily this is something that everyone can decide for themselves - if
> you're happy with the situation, start tracing; if you're not, then don't.
> There's enough mapping to be done without reliance to Bing images.
>
Yes, though its a little more complicated than that. What if there is
data from GPS, data from NearMap and data from Bing. There is enough
diversity to find people who think one data source is superior with
the other and shouldn't be replace with the other. How do we decide
who's data is the best? I face this every day when I have to decide
whether to replace someones GPS survey data with NearMap derived
information. On one hand NearMap is a perfectly legitimate data source
and is in most cases probably more accurate that a consumer GPS. On
the other hand someone who likes the contributor terms may think that
their GPS data is superior and shouldn't be replaced with more
accurate NearMap derived information because the NearMap information
is incompatible with the contributors terms.
If we go along with everyone make up their own mind, clashes will erupt.
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