Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
2011/5/5 Peter Wendorff : > Am 05.05.2011 06:59, schrieb Mike Dupont: >> I think it would make sense to have many layers of data, each with its >> own source rules (on layer for each major import, a tiger layer for >> example) >> and also each layer would have its own license. Also you can split >> these layers by country if needed. > I think, the idea is a good one, but there are a lot of problems, if you try > to create that in practice. > Layering is a good idea, I think, but the tagging system we have even makes > layering nearly impossible for the data we have. I don't think that layering is a good idea, as long as the different layers aren't directly connected (i.e. reference the same nodes, ...), and then you could just as well let it be (or create the dynamically in the editor). Layering would detach the different classes of objects we have in the db from eachother, so the end result for map editors would be that they had to either display all layers or they will create inconsistencies between the different layers. It would also not solve the license problems, because if you used a odbl-layer for guidance in the background while you drew something on a PD layer you would create a derived work/data and with any viral license this would change the license required for the PD layer as well. cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
Hi Mike. Am 05.05.2011 06:59, schrieb Mike Dupont: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 6:41 PM, Serge Wroclawski wrote: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 2:07 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote: I've thought about this myself; would it be better to have separate, smaller instances of OSM, the way Wikipedia does. I think it would make sense to have many layers of data, each with its own source rules (on layer for each major import, a tiger layer for example) and also each layer would have its own license. Also you can split these layers by country if needed. You should be able to manage multiple layers in the database or have many databases. Basically OSM should be more open to different licenses and not try and push everything into one single licensed layer. The rendering my be slower in the end, but you can have multiple transparent layers that you can turn on and off. I think, the idea is a good one, but there are a lot of problems, if you try to create that in practice. Layering is a good idea, I think, but the tagging system we have even makes layering nearly impossible for the data we have. Including a "Tiger layer" is good for editing, but not for using the data. To use the data you have to either follow the licenses of all layers you use - and use a license working with all these siblicenses together, or you have to ignore some of the layers. To edit the data: Where is the distinction? If I resurvey a tiger-imported street and make a better one, I add the new version to another layer as I have another license in mind. Which one to use for data consumers? Isn't the "this way is deleted because of the new one in the other layer an act of vandalism? That is the option that I am looking into, I have gotten approval from the archive.org to host tiles on the 5 petabyte server of theirs. My idea is to manage multiple layers of data and update them there as needed. Great to have several sources consumers can use; but I miss the benefit to create the kind of license-layers you propose, because it moves the problems of licensing more to the consumer, and solves nothing. regards Peter ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
Russ, (I'm trying to move this over to legal-talk because you are expressing an interesting legal viewpoint): On 05/05/11 06:27, Russ Nelson wrote: I'm wondering on what data you come to that conclusion? Because people have clicked "ok" on the license change and CTs? And yet there is no agreement and no contract. The OSMF has made it clear: you agree, or we delete your data and throw it into the dustbin of history. An agreement made under duress is no agreement at all. So, yes, do please tell me where you're getting your data from, because if you're counting my click, you can discount it. Would you really say that personally, as far as your contributions are concerned, you consider your "I agree" click to be legally void because it happened "under duress"? It would be interesting to hear a lawyer's perspective on that. From time to time I get emails from various service providers (eg PayPal) telling me: "We're changing our terms and conditions... please click here to agree" or so. With the implication that they will not continue to provide services to me unless I agree to their (unilateral) change of terms. Would you say that such an agreement happens "under duress" as well? Is it not rather like this: You have created data that OSMF offers to distribute for free via their infrastructure; now they're changing their terms and they only continue to offer this service if you agree to the changed terms? Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
2011/5/5 Russ Nelson : > Dermot McNally writes: > > The change in licence and CTs has been endorsed massively by The > > Community. > > I'm wondering on what data you come to that conclusion? Because people > have clicked "ok" on the license change and CTs? And yet there is no > agreement and no contract. The OSMF has made it clear: you agree, or > we delete your data and throw it into the dustbin of history. An > agreement made under duress is no agreement at all. If I'not mistaken, license change was endorsed by: 1) OSMF voting, in which lot of people didn't care to turn in their votes. Rest of us voted for license change; 2) Low level of actual arguing against license outside this list. There is no fork, no serious campaign to turn vote result around; 3) People still can read and as far as I know most of mappers are quite informed about license change so "dumb clickers" charge won't work here. They still don't complain because they trust OSMF/don't care/don't have problems with changing license for their data; At first I was seriously against license change not because of license (I had hard time to argue against that their authors don't know what they're doing), but because of way it was done. However, in recent year, I have seen some serious effort from OSMF towards community minor complains (major ones are just fundamental differences) mostly about CT. In current form is is near possible compromise. I know that lot of complains are coming about "huge elephant in the room about which no one wants to talk about" or "massive imports with CC-BY-SA". Problem is also with thirty party data in general (infamous CT). But CT has changed a quite since my last complains and lot of questions are answered. About massive imports - well, ODbL isn't that different, one must try to work with vendor to have data relicensed. In nutshell, if you are still unhappy about that, then it is time to fork because what's done done. And in my opinion no, splitting OSMF or OSM in "country organizations" isn't that fork. Cheers, Peter. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 6:41 PM, Serge Wroclawski wrote: > On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 2:07 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote: > I've thought about this myself; would it be better to have separate, > smaller instances of OSM, the way Wikipedia does. I think it would make sense to have many layers of data, each with its own source rules (on layer for each major import, a tiger layer for example) and also each layer would have its own license. Also you can split these layers by country if needed. You should be able to manage multiple layers in the database or have many databases. Basically OSM should be more open to different licenses and not try and push everything into one single licensed layer. The rendering my be slower in the end, but you can have multiple transparent layers that you can turn on and off. That is the option that I am looking into, I have gotten approval from the archive.org to host tiles on the 5 petabyte server of theirs. My idea is to manage multiple layers of data and update them there as needed. my two cents. mike ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
Dermot McNally writes: > The change in licence and CTs has been endorsed massively by The > Community. I'm wondering on what data you come to that conclusion? Because people have clicked "ok" on the license change and CTs? And yet there is no agreement and no contract. The OSMF has made it clear: you agree, or we delete your data and throw it into the dustbin of history. An agreement made under duress is no agreement at all. So, yes, do please tell me where you're getting your data from, because if you're counting my click, you can discount it. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
Hi, On 05/04/11 19:34, Kai Krueger wrote: Wikipedia has a global foundation responsible for the maintenance of all databases and then local chapters who provide further support and services on top of that. OSM (can) works similar. There is a global database and various local chapters that provide a lot of additional services and help create a global community. The difference is that in Wikipedia, there are actually separate instances of the core database (even if usually on the same infrastructure), and while they all share the same license (which they wouldn't even *have* to do), there are quite some differences. For example the German Wikipedia has introduced a system where an article will not be publicly visible unless approved by someone with special "approver" status, and the German Wikipedia has much stricter rules on what topics are "relevant" and therefore warrant an article than e.g. the English Wikipedia has. These are decisions which have caused heated discussions, and people have left the project for that; so various "national" Wikipedias decided for themselves whether they wanted these things or not because (I assume) there would have been too much attrition had one tried to decide this for all of Wikipedia at once. There is only very few things that really depend on the global OSMF. The running of the core db server, the api and data licensing. Everything else can and already has been done independently. The points you mention could be done independently if one really wanted to. For example, there is no technical reason why a slippy map cannot load some tiles from an Australian server and some from an American one. Or, if you prefer that, there is no reason why a centrally operated tile server cannot import American data from American minutely diffs and Australian data from Australian minutely diffs. Of course some things would become a little more complex (mostly technical issues), but others would become easier (mostly social issues). And as for licensing - as long as licenses are compatible in some direction, e.g. with the US database being PD, the Aussie database being CC-BY, and the European database being ODbL, one could perfectly well create tiles from them and so on. Also - Steve - I dislike it when you say "break up one of the best open source projects", this sounds as if the project would be hurt in the process. Of course if there was reason to believe the project would be worse off after such a devolution, one wouldn't do it. But the way I see it, such a devolution could also bring a lot of advantages over and above what local chapters can bring. And - Serge - I wasn't joking, but I wasn't recommending this to be put on the agenda for 2012 either. It certainly is a possibility and much as you say that it is interesting to think about what a notary is in various countries, it is also interesting to think about how one would participate in, and use OSM if it were devolved like that. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
I think OSM can be great, but it still has a very long way to go. Let's look at some of the best open source projects: 1. Linux: Dominates the server market and will soon dominate the smartphone market. 2. Apache: Dominates web servers. 3. Firefox: For a very long time they were miles ahead of their closed source competitor (IE). On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 7:26 PM, Steve Coast wrote: > Oh and I missed the second half - what makes you think we appointed the > sysadmins? Perhaps you have not appointed them explicitly, but control the domain name and the servers on your behalf. So they are acting as your agents. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
On 4 May 2011 18:21, Nic Roets wrote: > I rejected the CTs because I felt the OSMF* was out of touch with the > community. Your statement just reaffirms that. The Community, by my definition, is made up of the people who map, most of whom are not members of OSMF. The change in licence and CTs has been endorsed massively by The Community. I won't make any blanket judgement on people who feel they have to say no to the change - some are indeed in tricky situations - but I find your very premise flawed. Dermot -- -- Igaühel on siin oma laul ja ma oma ei leiagi üles ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
Serge Wroclawski-2 wrote: > > I've thought about this myself; would it be better to have separate, > smaller instances of OSM, the way Wikipedia does. > Arguably that is already the case. Wikipedia has a global foundation responsible for the maintenance of all databases and then local chapters who provide further support and services on top of that. OSM (can) works similar. There is a global database and various local chapters that provide a lot of additional services and help create a global community. Take an example at the German osm chapter. (Other local chapters presumably do similar things, I am just not as familiar with them). The German chapter for example has its own website, which is very different to the osm.org website, owning its own domain name. It has its own dev server, it has its own mailing lists separately maintained from the global (and talk-de) ones, it has its own local conferences, it has its own hack days. It also has its own rendering server, including different tile styles. They are also currently discussing if they want to adopt the new logo, or prefer to stick with the old one which is also perfectly fine. With Potlatch 2 and with JOSM, you can have your own country specific tagging presets, that mostly abstracts away the underlying actual key value pairs. So where there are international equivalents, it will simply be a translation of the name, but for others, it might be its own set of key-value pairs. In many ways, the chapters are incredibly independent already and currently OSMF has no say what so ever in the chapters (as there aren't any formal agreements between any yet). So if you really don't like the way OSMF operates (which is understandable), set up a local chapter to run things better. It is likely to be much easier to get consensus on things on a local level, so having strong independent chapters would strengthen everyone. There is only very few things that really depend on the global OSMF. The running of the core db server, the api and data licensing. Everything else can and already has been done independently. Kai -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Breaking-up-is-hard-to-do-was-New-Logo-in-the-Wiki-tp6331583p6331753.html Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
Oh and I missed the second half - what makes you think we appointed the sysadmins? On 5/4/2011 10:23 AM, Steve Coast wrote: So you're suggesting OSM is one of the worst project? On 5/4/2011 10:21 AM, Nic Roets wrote: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 7:02 PM, Steve Coast wrote: ... one of the best open source projects. I rejected the CTs because I felt the OSMF* was out of touch with the community. Your statement just reaffirms that. *: I make no distinction between the board and the people they appoint e.g. the sysadmins. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
So you're suggesting OSM is one of the worst project? On 5/4/2011 10:21 AM, Nic Roets wrote: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 7:02 PM, Steve Coast wrote: ... one of the best open source projects. I rejected the CTs because I felt the OSMF* was out of touch with the community. Your statement just reaffirms that. *: I make no distinction between the board and the people they appoint e.g. the sysadmins. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 7:02 PM, Steve Coast wrote: > ... one of the best open source projects. > I rejected the CTs because I felt the OSMF* was out of touch with the community. Your statement just reaffirms that. *: I make no distinction between the board and the people they appoint e.g. the sysadmins. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
I think that has been done with the change to the Contribution Terms and licensing. Cheerio John On 4 May 2011 13:02, Steve Coast wrote: > I can't, but that wasn't clear to me. It's also dominant in air traffic > control. It seems a little flimsy as a base reason to break up one of the > best open source projects. > > > > On 5/4/2011 10:01 AM, Nic Roets wrote: > >> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Steve Coast wrote: >> >>> I dispute point 1, if anything the project is German-centric if you look >>> at >>> the depth and quantity of data? >>> >> Steve, he was talking about language, not geographical dominance. You >> can't argue that English is dominant. >> >> > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
I can't, but that wasn't clear to me. It's also dominant in air traffic control. It seems a little flimsy as a base reason to break up one of the best open source projects. On 5/4/2011 10:01 AM, Nic Roets wrote: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Steve Coast wrote: I dispute point 1, if anything the project is German-centric if you look at the depth and quantity of data? Steve, he was talking about language, not geographical dominance. You can't argue that English is dominant. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Steve Coast wrote: > I dispute point 1, if anything the project is German-centric if you look at > the depth and quantity of data? Steve, he was talking about language, not geographical dominance. You can't argue that English is dominant. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)
I dispute point 1, if anything the project is German-centric if you look
at the depth and quantity of data?
On 5/4/2011 9:41 AM, Serge Wroclawski wrote:
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 2:07 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
Hi,
On 05/04/11 03:23, Serge Wroclawski wrote:
Dave, if you have a suggestion that would let us communicate in real
time (not over weeks via email) then please share this with the group.
The alternative to communicating in real-time is fundamentally changing your
organisational structure to reduce international decision-making to an
absolute bare minimum by devolution.
For example, move to a kind of distributed software/database architecture,
incorporate OpenStreetMap Australia, let them collect their own funds,
operate their own database, make their own decisions, have their own logo,
have their own project main page, have their own strategy working group,
have their own license, and so on.
I've thought about this myself; would it be better to have separate,
smaller instances of OSM, the way Wikipedia does.
In the end I concluded not, but I thought I'd lay out the argument,
just for discussion sake.
Arguments for Breaking OSM up:
1. Removes project language barrier
OSM is nearly entirely Anglo-centric. We have a large number of German
speakers, but the project, as its core, is English. This creates a
barrier to entry for many folks.
2. Allows for more adoption of local-centric tagging.
If one country has road classifications that make sense, it can use
them, and not need to adopt OSM standards.
3. It allows for local features
Some features only exist in certain places, and so it makes sense for
those local features to be in a local tagging set, but not another.
4. It eliminates part of the issue we have around times/timezones.
Unless you live in Russia, your country has a small number of
timezones, and so organizing meetings and events is not as
challenging.
Ultimately, though, I think this is the wrong approach, and here's why:
1. Translation software exists.
Tags don't need to be displayed to the end user unless they want to
see them, just as few people see raw column names when they edit a
form on a web site.
As editors become increasingly sophisticated, the issues around
translation will reduce over time.
2. OSM is its own de-faco standards body.
By needing to classifications from various countries, I find the OSM
{tax|folks}onomy to overall be very robust. Since we have to deal with
so many variations, we tend to create classifications that work at a
very granular level, but because we're human beings mapping on the
ground, the classifications tend to be useful for other human beings
in a way that's largely intuitive.
I don't think we'd have that kind of clean tagging across the board
unless we had the necessity.
3. Local features are interesting, and the discussions we have on
meaning is educational
I like to bring up this discussion when talking about OSM tagging to
strangers. Someone on the list wanted to create a tag for US "Notary
Publics", often just called "Notaries".
Someone in France spoke up and said "I agree, we should have a tag for
lawyers and notaries".
This brought up a very interesting discussion on the differences
between the legal systems of the US, France, the UK, and Australia.
Each of these countries had a slightly different meaning for the word
notary, along with a different role that a notary plays.
By discussing this difference up front, all of us received some
education on legal systems, but were also then forced to define our
terms, which bring us back to our robust tagging system.
5. If we don't unify the tags up front, we have to unify them later.
Our users have gotten used to maps that "just work" across the world.
If they get broken up, someone will later have to re-assemble them,
and they're bound to do it badly because of the lack of the robust
discussions that happen.
6. Wikipedia's break is not purely country-based
Let's not forget that Wikipedia needs to break itself up because of
linguistic issues, as well as some cultural ones.
We have done very well unifiying our datasets.
7. No turf wars
Right now, I'm as largely comfortable mapping wherever I am. With
separate instances, I could easily be setting myself up for all kinds
of issues, from the technical (getting a different set of credentials)
to tagging, to mores of "You aren't to map this area because our local
rules say it belongs to BigMeanUser."
8. OSM can be more robust than the nations themselves.
It's hard to realize sometimes, but in the last year, look at how much
political unrest has occurred in the Middle East. And I'm old enough
to remember all the new maps that needed to be created after the
Soviet Union fell. OSM may end up being more long lasting than the
nations it maps. So let's not tie ourselves to them.
Anyway it's just a thought exercise, and I'm fairly sure Frederik was
joking (I don't get German humor).
- Serge
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