Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Greg Morgan]

On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 3:42 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer  wrote:

>
>
> > Am 17/mar/2014 um 02:28 schrieb Greg Morgan :
> >
> > If I need to split a building, the original primary key does not stay
> with one of the two pieces of the building.  Two new buildings are created
> with two new primary keys.
>
>
> as a side note this is not like you described, the original way id will
> remain on one of the two pieces (at least with Josm you can also control
> which)
>

I stand corrected on the pkey issue the way that Josm works.  This is what
I was thinking about when I made the comment about pkeys.

8:00 minutes into "A Gazetteer for the Library of Congress" Schuyler Erle
states, "As you probably know OSM does not have permanent identifiers for
anything which is one of the requirements for this project."
http://vimeopro.com/openstreetmapus/state-of-the-map-us-2013/video/68099833

I ran two change sets to test and a third to delete the prior tests.

Stock JOSM version 6891 in non-expert mode.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/21186226
267171718, v1
267171717, v1
http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/21186240
267171718, v2
267171717, v2
267171816, v1
267171815, v1
267171814, v1
267171813, v1
http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/21186252

The gist of the problem remains. If ...1718 and ...1717 are imported from a
source and OSM mappers and the source are going to help maintain the data
after giving away the farm,  how do I know in the original source that
there are three new segments to each of my original lines?  How do I know
which of the ..181[3456] segments belong to the originating segments?  If a
gnis name was imported as a node and expanded to a way,  how do I track
this?  This is especially true, if the import node is deleted and not added
as part of the way.  The tags are all moved to the way, which has a pkey
from another sequence.


> cheers,
> Martin
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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Serge Wroclawski]

Alex,

Some of the points you continue to make are patently false.

> 1. There is more open data coming online by the day and we are not compatible


Let's take this apart. If the data is "open", by which you mean that
it would fall into something like the definition of
freedomdefined.org, then there are only a few ways in which the ODbL
would be incompatible:

1. Requirement for attribution

If this were the case, dropping Share-Alike would change nothing

2. Requirement for Share-Alike

If this were the case, dropping Share-Alike would make us less compatible

3. An addition requirement on the data

If this is the case, it's not "open data" and thus the statement is false

> The world is doing more stuff with raw data.

Yes, they should do more stuff with Free data, and what they can do
has virtually no limitations.

> OpenStreetMap's problem is that share-alike's diminishing effect on utility 
> is more severe for data than for software.

Hyperbole, and as shown previously, based on statements which are just not true.

There are unfortunate side effects. It would be nice if OSM were
compatible with governments, for example, but unfortunately do to so
would grant our non-Free competitors far too much advantage over us.

How do I know this to be the case? Because it's happened already. It's
already happened that companies like Google have used OSM data, and
have bad to take that data down after it was pointed out that the
license was incompatible.

The minute that OSM data were put out without Share-Alike, we would be
utterly demolished by other entities taking OSM data, adding data to
it, and then selling "enhanced versions".


- Serge

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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Alex Barth]

Just posted my comments to key points that came up in the conversation over
on the diary:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21221#comment25849


On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 7:26 AM, Alex Barth  wrote:

> Hello everyone -
>
> I've been sitting on writing about the detrimental effects of
> OpenStreetMap's share-alike license (ODbL) for a while and finally decided
> to, um, share. I've been listening long to many OpenStreetMappers I respect
> a ton telling me it's not so bad and it's just what we're stuck with right
> now. But given how bad share alike is for OpenStreetMap I don't think we
> should give up for pushing for a more open license. Here's why I think
> share-alike hurts OpenStreetMap and how this keeps OpenStreetMap from
> having the full impact it could have:
>
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21221
>
> Looking forward to your comments,
>
> Alex
>
>
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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

> Am 17/mar/2014 um 02:28 schrieb Greg Morgan :
> 
> If I need to split a building, the original primary key does not stay with 
> one of the two pieces of the building.  Two new buildings are created with 
> two new primary keys.  


as a side note this is not like you described, the original way id will remain 
on one of the two pieces (at least with Josm you can also control which)

cheers,
Martin
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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Minh Nguyen]

On 18:28 2014-03-16, Greg Morgan wrote:

And now for something completely different: It's the cartographers that
are limiting the project adoption and burnout rate for contributors.
Here's your next bottle neck to work on.


Then after that: addresses. :-)


I understand how difficult it is to render the world.  However, I
consider that the current method of data distribution and the rendering
chain is broken.  I don't have a better solution yet but here's a
problem that is right in MapBox's wheel house that can be fixed without
a costly and damaging license change. When Alex says, "OpenStreetMap's
purpose is to democratize who decides what's on the map" that's not true
based on what is actually rendered.  It is an oligarchy of cartographers
that determine what is on the map and not the democracy of what the
mappers have placed in the database.

Vector tiles are not the solution if the resulting tiles are the just
more of the same minimalist map tiles.  We need a real mapper's map
again.  We need tiles that are so butt ugly only a mother would hang the
project tiles on her fridge because that's what little Johnny did in
school today.  The type of butt ugly tiles I am talking about are
something like Tiles@Home,
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tiles@Home.  The magic of T@H was
that I was rewarded as a young mapper.  It was magic when I saw the
first traffic=hump that I added to the database show up on the map.
  From there, it was an Easter egg hunt to find traffic calming humps as
I could while I fixed tiger data.


I had the same reaction when swimming pools started appearing on the 
Standard map.



The cartographers are creating beautiful maps. I show people MapBox
maps, Stamin Design, or Andy Allen's work.  However all these are just
minimalist maps that do not show what the database is capable of and the
type of data that the database contains.  Many people have to see it to
believe it. Just as the iD editor has been viewed as an important piece
of the puzzle, I view a mapper's map like Tiles@Home equally if not more
important than the iD editor. Here's an example. I mapped a ta ta bar,
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1801776750, It doesn't render. Another
mapper put a poi of a nightclub,
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2354317861.  It doesn't render.  That
was part of that mapper's first and last contribution.  The OSM process
appears broken.  In Google maps, however, a mapper using map maker is
rewarded with their efforts.  You can go to this same location and at
least see what I call a "Google Donut"
https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Candy+Store/@33.6555233,-112.0307235,20z.
   The perception is that map maker works while iD, Potlatch, JOSM,
Mercator are all broken.  Moreover, the mapper's map tiles can't be some
side project that goes away like T@H did.  The butt ugly tiles need to
be in the second slot on the OSM site and managed by OSM servers.  In a
sense, I have off-boarded part of my mapping just like this mapper did.
  I no longer map data of this type.  Why should I even put a sport tag
with a leisure=pitch when all the the current tile set needs is is pitch
to show a green blob? T@H would reward me with an icon that showed the
actual type of playing field.  Being rewarded for mapping efforts
encourages additional growth of the database.   Does nearing completion
of the map mean showing highways only as all the current pretty map
tiles show?


For all its rough edges, the osmarender/T&H map was great for showing 
people that OSM really does accept all manner of local knowledge. 
Anything with a store= tag could show up at the lowest zoom levels, just 
like on Google's map. (T&H also had very, very quick turnaround times, a 
feature we take for granted these days.)


Over the past few months, the Standard map has seen lots of improvements 
-- like offsetting administrative boundary labels! -- and I'm really 
grateful to the folks working on that effort. But there really does seem 
to be a drive to remove clutter from the map, starting with the fallback 
area labels. [1] I think it's a step backward. There are plenty of large 
features that aren't parks or golf courses: school grounds, residential 
subdivisions (estates), cemeteries, and retail developments no longer 
have labels at z14, causing the map to appear nearly unlabeled in 
suburban areas. [2]


It may be the case that a cleaner map will be less intimidating to new 
users. However, it should be possible to make the map dirtier, more 
crowded, if only to give each mapper an outlet for their detailed local 
knowledge. It is possible, of course, but we need to do a better job of 
communicating that fact.


[1] https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/351
[2] Compare  to 



--
m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us


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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[stevea]

In system management, success is reaching the 
next bottle neck.  My take away from Alex's 
concern is "What is the next bottle neck for OSM 
to focus on?"  We can already see some of the 
great successes that MapBox has created from the 
ideas used to make a slippy map.  I am so 
thankful for the whole idea of mbtiles.  What a 
wonderful idea.  I am so thankful for TileMill. 
I show people TillMill and how they can use it 
to get into GIS with a limited budget. These 
people can save a ton of cash and learn the same 
important concepts behind GIS without more 
expensive tools.  However, I don't believe that 
the license is the next bottleneck.  The next 
bottleneck to face is something more like 
creating the iD editor.


I understand the Gift Culture.  I've been to 
Burning Man a dozen times.  OK, more or less:  it 
might be eleven, it might be thirteen or 
fourteen.  I have just barely lost count, so it 
is somewhere between 11 and 14 (starting in 1995, 
when there were only "hundreds" or "low 
thousands" there, not the tens of thousands I've 
seen in past years).  Yet still:  the Gift 
Culture is real.


I've just described the gift culture of the open 
source/data world. My dentist doesn't get it. 
He thinks that I should make as much money as I 
can.  Why are you giving this away?  MapBox has 
gifted us some great things.  Part of my gift 
back is to use a project or tell other people 
about these gifts.  Corporations don't always 
get this idea.  We can look to the recent 
example of Oracle Corporation and the 
Jenkins/Hudson controversy.  In short, Oracle 
wanted to take complete control of the open 
source Hudson project.  The rift was so bad that 
Jenkins was forked out of Hudson so that the 
project could continue.   In a perfect world, 
I'd say Alex, let's change the license so that 
we can share things better with one another. 
However, I can't.  Others don't understand that 
gift culture like you and I do.  From all bad 
things that I've seen, I wouldn't license the 
data under any other license than ODbl.


My experience with OSM for nearly five years has 
been largely my ".org side" of giving back as a 
volunteer.  Sometimes it potentially strays into 
the ".com realm," as I do run a software 
consultancy that charges by the hour.  I haven't 
yet billed for hours yet for any OSM work, but I 
don't rule it out in the future.  The Gift 
Culture and volunteering blurs a bit with my .org 
and .com worlds.  I suspect there are others for 
whom this is true as well.



ODbl isn't the only license that causes legal heartburn.


There is a liquid boundary right now going on. 
Part of it is because of differences in Europe 
and USA, part of it is cultural, as in "freedom" 
(of Information Act at a federal level, Public 
Record Acts making for "green pastures" regarding 
data openness), part of it is corporate as in 
"what the courts have said and are likely TO 
say...".



Greg addresses heady issues which are not germane 
to my responses, so I hereby duck out of this 
thread.


Next problem with this ideal is that OSM cannot 
guarantee the integrity of the data once it has 
been placed into the OSM database.  I started to 
map pedestrian crossings. I am OK that a 
crossing is not rendered at this time because I 
use a node for a crossing, a node for a traffic 
light, and another crossing node to help line up 
intersections.  I also thought that it would be 
a great way to sell governments on the use of 
this kind-of data to maintain their annual 
restriping of crosswalks.  A new mapper comes 
along and starts deleting the crossing data 
because cartographers have not rendered the 
data.  The data were/are considered map clutter. 
I guess the reason is that if I cannot see the 
data rendered, then why do I have to plow 
through it in an editor?


I will say that iD allows very entry-level 
editors to make significant contributions 
(witness the University of California Santa Cruz 
students of CMPE 80A who enter 
mobility/handicapped data like tactile_paving and 
crosswalks and bus_stop data).  While the editor 
might largely contribute to them "getting this 
wrong," it isn't hard (but it is a bit of work) 
to "clean up" these data.  So, it's a step in the 
right direction for early users to use iD, 
especially if they make "sloppy" errors, but the 
data they enter are important and valuable.


I agree with Greg's characterization that it is 
important to get contributions (even if slightly 
"goofed") which can be "cleaned up" or 
"harmonized" later.  See, "getting data in" is 
important, and "getting data in right" is 
important.  Both don't need to happen at the same 
time (though it is good if they do), as "cleanup" 
can happen.  In fact, it is valuable as it does, 
even as a two-step process.


What Greg says about ugly tiles reminds me of 
osmaender (sp?) from circa 2011.  That was an 
ugly renderer in many cases, but showed tagging 
at a "ragged" level.  Maybe we can get to 
something like that

Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Greg Morgan]

In system management, success is reaching the next bottle neck.  My take
away from Alex's concern is "What is the next bottle neck for OSM to focus
on?"  We can already see some of the great successes that MapBox has
created from the ideas used to make a slippy map.  I am so thankful for the
whole idea of mbtiles.  What a wonderful idea.  I am so thankful for
TileMill.  I show people TillMill and how they can use it to get into GIS
with a limited budget. These people can save a ton of cash and learn the
same important concepts behind GIS without more expensive tools.  However,
I don't believe that the license is the next bottleneck.  The next
bottleneck to face is something more like creating the iD editor.

I've just described the gift culture of the open source/data world. My
dentist doesn't get it.  He thinks that I should make as much money as I
can.  Why are you giving this away?  MapBox has gifted us some great
things.  Part of my gift back is to use a project or tell other people
about these gifts.  Corporations don't always get this idea.  We can look
to the recent example of Oracle Corporation and the Jenkins/Hudson
controversy.  In short, Oracle wanted to take complete control of the open
source Hudson project.  The rift was so bad that Jenkins was forked out of
Hudson so that the project could continue.   In a perfect world, I'd say
Alex, let's change the license so that we can share things better with one
another.  However, I can't.  Others don't understand that gift culture like
you and I do.  From all bad things that I've seen, I wouldn't license the
data under any other license than ODbl.

ODbl isn't the only license that causes legal heartburn.  I've transcribed
part of Dr Richard Hipp's Google Tec talk,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giAMt8Tj-84#t=1703, concerning his
experience with the public domain license:
"Observations from running the project...SQLite is in the Public Domain.
I've learned over these six years that this is not necessarily a good thing
from the point of the people who use it. I thought that when I was going to
release SQLite source code into the public domain that this would make it
easier for people to use it.  But big company engineers want to use it in a
product.  The engineers talk to the lawyers.  The lawyers see the public
domain and they panic. Oh what do we do?  We know how to deal with the GPL.
 We know how to deal with the MIT license or the Berkley license.  People
tell me that there is no public domain in Europe.  This is purely an
American concept.  I have generated an enormous amount of billing for
corporate lawyers by placing this in the public domain.  One company in
Europe was not willing to accept that this was in the public domain. So
they paid a small token fee to me and the other developers.  They made us
sign professional use licenses so that they would be covered.  So I don't
have an alternative what could be better. I think that this is a political
thing.  It surprised me how difficult it would be to use public domain
software."

Alex states a great ideal with, "Ideally the government of New York City
would just copy changes from OpenStreetMap to help maintain their own
datasets - but they can't. Many datasets managed by government behind
closed doors today should just be managed by the same maintainers on
OpenStreetMap tomorrow - with gains for everyone".  One of the problems
with the OSM database is that there is no guarantee of a permanent primary
key.  If I need to split a building, the original primary key does not stay
with one of the two pieces of the building.  Two new buildings are created
with two new primary keys.  I don't know of a way to bridge two systems
when you lose a primary key.  One way would be to store the primary key in
with the OSM data.  I believe this kind-of "meta" data is frowned on in the
community.  The meta data that would be required for joint maintenance can
always be deleted. A license change will not solve the government sharing
problem.  They have to find a way to jump in with both feet.

Next problem with this ideal is that OSM cannot guarantee the integrity of
the data once it has been placed into the OSM database.  I started to map
pedestrian crossings. I am OK that a crossing is not rendered at this time
because I use a node for a crossing, a node for a traffic light, and
another crossing node to help line up intersections.  I also thought that
it would be a great way to sell governments on the use of this kind-of data
to maintain their annual restriping of crosswalks.  A new mapper comes
along and starts deleting the crossing data because cartographers have not
rendered the data.  The data were/are considered map clutter.  I guess the
reason is that if I cannot see the data rendered, then why do I have to
plow through it in an editor?

Next problem with this ideal is tagging mistakes. The idea of iD editor was
to bring in new editors.  Invariably, mistakes are made.  I thanked a
mapper for his contributio

Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Randy Meech]

I am still thinking about this and look forward to Alex's talk next month in DC.

However, as a "business user" who directed a lot of money toward OSM
at one point in my career, I thought it would be useful to run through
why the SA aspects of the license were important to me at the time.

I was at MapQuest back then, and Steve Coast was at Microsoft. Both
companies spent substantial amounts on proprietary data to run their
maps (still do :). It seemed to me that the better option would have
been to get a consortium of like-minded companies together and provide
support to the vibrant OSM community instead, commoditize the data
layer by helping the community however we could, and then compete at a
layer above the data.

Other companies that were not fundamentally behind open data would go
their own way, including my other former employer Google. But back
then I would have loved for MapQuest and Microsoft to get together and
support data behind by a SA license. And if other companies wanted to
join in too, that would have been great. And if others wanted to go
their own way, they could do so outside the "common wealth" protected
by SA.

Didn't quite happen that way in the end, but that was my thinking. I
don't know whether SA would help or hurt in this regard at this point
in time. Would love to discuss as I am still forming an opinion, and
again I am looking forward to Alex's talk.

The other thing that might be interesting on this topic: the legal
team back in the day had no problem with the older CC BY-SA license
(obviously, because we launched), but I recall a preference for the
then-impending ODbL. Not sure how many of you have worked at a large
public corporation, but trust me the legal teams there can be *quite*
conservative. This was not a startup with small data and timid VCs,
and it was just fine.

So companies shouldn't worry about using OSM, becoming Mapbox
customers, etc. The companies that should worry are the ones banking
on proprietary data to provide long-term value!

The hallmark of the "business user" is pragmatism. What will yield the
better data, the better community, etc. I am not quite sure yet but am
keeping an open mind.

-Randy

On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 10:26 AM, Alex Barth  wrote:
> Hello everyone -
>
> I've been sitting on writing about the detrimental effects of
> OpenStreetMap's share-alike license (ODbL) for a while and finally decided
> to, um, share. I've been listening long to many OpenStreetMappers I respect
> a ton telling me it's not so bad and it's just what we're stuck with right
> now. But given how bad share alike is for OpenStreetMap I don't think we
> should give up for pushing for a more open license. Here's why I think
> share-alike hurts OpenStreetMap and how this keeps OpenStreetMap from having
> the full impact it could have:
>
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21221
>
> Looking forward to your comments,
>
> Alex
>
>
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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Phil! Gold]

* Alex Barth  [2014-03-13 10:26 -0400]:
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21221

This is really similar to the discussions that periodically happen in the
open source software community over whether share-alike licenses like the
GPL or open-use licenses like the 3-clause BSD license are better.

I usually end up on the side of share-alike for reasons best summed up by
a friend of mine who once said, "The GPL restricts your freedom to be
evil.  The BSD license doesn't."

I think that if your goal is to have as many people as possible using your
data, you're best off choosing open-use or public domain licensing.
(Richard Weait and I chose to go with CC0 and PDDL for the data in the
shield rendering so as to allow for as much variance of reuse as
possible.  Similarly, it makes sense for US federal government data,
because their mandate is to be as useful to US citizens as possible.)

If, however, you want to foster a community around a larger scale project,
I think share-alike is a better path to take.  If OSM switched to public
domain licensing today, there would almost certainly be more people using
and benefiting from today's OSM data.  Google in particular would probably
make OSM data part of its data; they already merge numerous public domain
datasets into their proprietary dataset.  That would make Google the
better choice for a lot of people than plain OSM data, and you can even
edit Google's data through their Map Maker program.  From there, I suspect
that Map Maker would attract more people that might otherwise have ended
up contributing to OSM, which would hurt community growth and benefit
Google at the expense of all the other OSM data consumers.

In my opinion, the single biggest thing that makes OSM valuable is the
community of people contributing to it, and the license on the data needs
to reinforce that community, not allow proprietary data uses to splinter
it.

-- 
...computer contrarian of the first order... / http://aperiodic.net/phil/
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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Richard Weait]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 5:32 PM, Simon Poole  wrote:

> And while I haven't updated my charts yet this year, I have already produced
> numbers for January and February 2014. January showed the largest increase
> in contributors in a month to date in the history of OSM and the second
> largest total number of monthly active contributors. Not exactly indicating
> that we have an issue.

I'm sure that we will find that the big jump in contributions in
January is due to the wonderful article(s)[1] that Serge Wroclawski
wrote.  Serge spoke of the importance of contributing data to
OpenStreetMap.  Serge is to be congratulated on very well executed
advocacy for the benefit of the OpenStreetMap project.

[1] http://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2014/01/04/why-the-world-needs-openstreetmap/

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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Simon Poole]

Am 14.03.2014 21:47, schrieb Carol Kraemer:
> ..
>
> Let's say that there are 1,500,000 registered users
>  as is
> stated by the first graph. I will also look at the last year of % of
> total users contributing where the highest percentage is no more than
> 2%. This is a conservative guess, at best, but that means that
> internationally, there have only been about 30,000 active users
> contributing of the 1,500,000 registered users.
> ..
Unluckily you are being misled by the numbers, which are not wrong, but
you do have to understand how they were produced.

See https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SimonPoole/diary/20524 or similar
numbers from Pascal Neis for indications of what is really going on.

And while I haven't updated my charts yet this year, I have already
produced numbers for January and February 2014. January showed the
largest increase in contributors in a month to date in the history of
OSM and the second largest total number of monthly active contributors.
Not exactly indicating that we have an issue.

The contributors/accounts ratio has gone up and down a bit over time,
but that is more likely mainly due to external effects, the contributor
numbers show a steady, slightly increasing over time, growth.

Simon



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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Simon Poole]

Am 14.03.2014 22:32, schrieb Simon Poole:
> ... January showed the largest increase in contributors in a month to
> date in the history of OSM and the second largest total number of
> monthly active contributors.
Sorry, that should have been the other way around: the 2nd largest
absolute increase and the largest number of active contributors.



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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Simon Poole]

Yes, I believe that is fairly clear. We do however seem to have a clear
continuing increase in the average rate of new contributors too.

Simon


Am 14.03.2014 22:39, schrieb Richard Weait:
> On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 5:32 PM, Simon Poole  wrote:
>
>> And while I haven't updated my charts yet this year, I have already produced
>> numbers for January and February 2014. January showed the largest increase
>> in contributors in a month to date in the history of OSM and the second
>> largest total number of monthly active contributors. Not exactly indicating
>> that we have an issue.
> I'm sure that we will find that the big jump in contributions in
> January is due to the wonderful article(s)[1] that Serge Wroclawski
> wrote.  Serge spoke of the importance of contributing data to
> OpenStreetMap.  Serge is to be congratulated on very well executed
> advocacy for the benefit of the OpenStreetMap project.
>
> [1] http://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2014/01/04/why-the-world-needs-openstreetmap/
>
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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Carol Kraemer]

Hello Talk listers and happy Friday,

Though I do see how the licensing could introduce an issue when getting
certain entities to contribute data, the argument that has been put forth
many times now is that the people are important, not the data. (I can
provide examples of this if needed.) I bring this up because I read Steve
Coast's response and, again, this notion of the large number of registered
users was brought up by suggesting that "The ODbL has got us this far, and
all the graphs are up-and-to-the-right." Not to diminish the achievements
of OSM, but there is one graph that contradicts this quite clearly: "% of
total users 
contributing".
If I simply use the graphs presented on
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats (which Steve also pointed us to),
I see a contributor retention problem that doesn't seem to be addressed at
all. Here's an example of what I mean...

Let's say that there are 1,500,000 registered
usersas
is stated by the first graph. I will also look at the last year of %
of
total users contributing where the highest percentage is no more than 2%.
This is a conservative guess, at best, but that means that internationally,
there have only been about 30,000 active users contributing of the
1,500,000 registered users.

It's confusing also that Steve would bring up the notion that people
wanting to make money with OSM would be a negative side affect, when, in
fact, there are already others who are succeeding in doing that despite the
ODbL. The fact is, whether we like it or not, industry usually drives
innovation and progress. Though it has a long way to go, OSM can thank
supporting companies (Mapbox and GeoFabrik are two examples) for getting it
this far. They are as much a part of the community as any other contributor
would be. If this is truly an open database and open project, why is there
this need to restrict or exclude part of the community?

Sorry, this continues to go back to my original argument and I honestly
feel it is the core of the problem here more than anything else. The ODbL
certainly took a lot of time to nail down and it might make some
contributors apprehensive to share data with OSM, but is that the main
factor that determines if contributors share their data? Perhaps we should
look at defining OSM, what its mission is, and who it wants to support.
Perhaps that provides a clearer picture of which license would be
appropriate for data contributions.

Just my 2 cents...


-
Carol Kraemer
North River Geographic Systems, Inc
http://www.northrivergeographic.com
404.431.0125 cakrae...@northrivergeographic.com


On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 11:09 AM, Steve Coast  wrote:

> I disagree. This is about money; my personal belief is that CloudMade
> would have made more dollars without having to ShareAlike. More business
> models open up, and it wouldn't have had to deal with the community. Indeed
> I imagine this was a topic of continual discussion.
>
> The ODbL requires only two things and my understanding is that MapBox
> disagree with both of them, or at least Alex does. This shouldn't be
> surprising, they hinder making money, like it did for CM.
>
> But in those cases, we're talking about competition in the market via data
> sets.
>
> My personal belief, not speaking for them, is that Telenav has a different
> focus, in that free-to-the-consumer turn-by-turn navigation doesn't have
> these impediments. Therefore it would in theory not be an issue in our case
> to attribute and ShareAlike. Like in my original slides about OSM from
> years ago - it's about moving up the stack and competing at a higher level,
> not competing over data itself (where attribution and ShareAlike are
> relevant). Instead, going all-in on OSM and focusing on the product and
> user experience. Remember, these problems only occur if you don't want to
> use OSM, but want to use it with other datasetsets that you don't want to
> contribute back.
>
> As for legal opinions on the ODbL you should understand that weaker (or,
> really, any) lawyers don't like new things. New un-tested things have the
> potential to blow up in your face and throw you in court. Therefore the
> calculus is different when you are small and court is a scary place,
> compared to if you're a big company say like Microsoft and you're in court
> all the time. In my time I've met plenty of lawyers who're fine with the
> ODbL and it shouldn't be characterized that all lawyers everywhere somehow
> have major problems with it. The community norms (and the new ones the LWG
> is apparently putting together I heard) help very much here, and of course
> there are always issues with any license.
>
> Whether the ODbL is good or bad for OSM is a different question. The ODbL
> was a very fun multi-year process that I happen to have been deeply
> involved in. It would be nice if there was data to 

Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Steve Coast]

I disagree. This is about money; my personal belief is that CloudMade would 
have made more dollars without having to ShareAlike. More business models open 
up, and it wouldn’t have had to deal with the community. Indeed I imagine this 
was a topic of continual discussion.

The ODbL requires only two things and my understanding is that MapBox disagree 
with both of them, or at least Alex does. This shouldn’t be surprising, they 
hinder making money, like it did for CM.

But in those cases, we’re talking about competition in the market via data sets.

My personal belief, not speaking for them, is that Telenav has a different 
focus, in that free-to-the-consumer turn-by-turn navigation doesn’t have these 
impediments. Therefore it would in theory not be an issue in our case to 
attribute and ShareAlike. Like in my original slides about OSM from years ago - 
it’s about moving up the stack and competing at a higher level, not competing 
over data itself (where attribution and ShareAlike are relevant). Instead, 
going all-in on OSM and focusing on the product and user experience. Remember, 
these problems only occur if you don’t want to use OSM, but want to use it with 
other datasetsets that you don’t want to contribute back.

As for legal opinions on the ODbL you should understand that weaker (or, 
really, any) lawyers don’t like new things. New un-tested things have the 
potential to blow up in your face and throw you in court. Therefore the 
calculus is different when you are small and court is a scary place, compared 
to if you’re a big company say like Microsoft and you’re in court all the time. 
In my time I’ve met plenty of lawyers who’re fine with the ODbL and it 
shouldn’t be characterized that all lawyers everywhere somehow have major 
problems with it. The community norms (and the new ones the LWG is apparently 
putting together I heard) help very much here, and of course there are always 
issues with any license.

Whether the ODbL is good or bad for OSM is a different question. The ODbL was a 
very fun multi-year process that I happen to have been deeply involved in. It 
would be nice if there was data to suggest that one license is measurably 
better than another (for OSM). Instead, we have a large collections of 
anecdotes (not data) like “nobody uses OpenBSD because of the license” or 
“Linux wins because of the license”.

We’ve had beliefs like that in the past. For example “lots more people would 
edit with nicer tools”. This is a belief I shared. So, multiple times, we’ve 
built nicer tools. And it’s turned out that there is some small grain of truth 
to that but it’s not really comparable to the effort involved. I was wrong.

Alex makes a bunch of these statements like that, I’ll pick three that jump out:

1) "the assumption that share-alike encourages contribution is a myth”
2) "The reality is that OpenStreetMap is only used extensively in situations 
where the share-alike license does not apply, for instance, map rendering."
3) "OpenStreetMap's current licensing is stunting our growth"

And respond:

1) Data would be useful either way
2) I’d say that’s because OSM doesn’t contain a lot of address or navigation 
data (which, as it happens, is where the money is), not because of the license.
3) My personal belief is it might stunt CloudMade or MapBox, but not Telenav or 
MapQuest, and, http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats doesn’t show a lot of 
evidence of being stunted.

&ct.

I’ll sum by saying that when you’re picking licenses you’re really picking 
business models. We should be very careful when considering license changes and 
make sure any choice is backed by the best data we can get, not anecdotes or 
nice sounding stories. The ODbL has got us this far, and all the graphs are 
up-and-to-the-right. Exponential curves are powerful. Lastly, consider the 
weight of effort thousands of people put in to mapping before you to get us 
here, and what terms they did it under.

Steve





On Mar 14, 2014, at 1:18 AM, Russ Nelson  wrote:
> Alex Barth writes:
>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21221
> 
> Another aspect of where the ODbL hurts us: Because we are using a
> restrictive license, we cannot argue against other parties that use a
> restrictive license. Look at New York State's GIS
> Clearinghouse. Individuals not welcome. For-profit corporations not
> welcome. OpenStreetMap users  not welcome. NY government entities?
> Welcome! Non-profits? Welcome!
> 
> We can't argue against that on principle because we're just as bad.
> 
> -- 
> --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   
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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Russ Nelson]

Alex Barth writes:
 > http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21221

Another aspect of where the ODbL hurts us: Because we are using a
restrictive license, we cannot argue against other parties that use a
restrictive license. Look at New York State's GIS
Clearinghouse. Individuals not welcome. For-profit corporations not
welcome. OpenStreetMap users  not welcome. NY government entities?
Welcome! Non-profits? Welcome!

We can't argue against that on principle because we're just as bad.

-- 
--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   

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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Richard Welty]

On 3/13/14 1:27 PM, Richard Weait wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 10:26 AM, Alex Barth  wrote:
>> Hello everyone -
>>
>> I've been sitting on writing about the detrimental effects of
>> OpenStreetMap's share-alike license (ODbL) for a while and finally decided
>> to, um, share. I've been listening long to many OpenStreetMappers I respect
>> a ton telling me it's not so bad and it's just what we're stuck with right
>> now.
> OpenStreetMap is not "stuck" with ODbL, the OpenStreetMap community
> selected it.  The OpenStreetMap community even helped to craft ODbL,
> with the Open Knowledge Foundation and OpenDataCommons.org, by
> participating in the discussions that went into drafting ODbL.
>
and moving to ODbL was a fairly massive and painful process.
the advantages of a license change would need to be fairly
substantial to make the pain involved worthwhile.

richard

-- 
rwe...@averillpark.net
 Averill Park Networking - GIS & IT Consulting
 OpenStreetMap - PostgreSQL - Linux
 Java - Web Applications - Search




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Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Richard Weait]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 10:26 AM, Alex Barth  wrote:
> Hello everyone -
>
> I've been sitting on writing about the detrimental effects of
> OpenStreetMap's share-alike license (ODbL) for a while and finally decided
> to, um, share. I've been listening long to many OpenStreetMappers I respect
> a ton telling me it's not so bad and it's just what we're stuck with right
> now.

OpenStreetMap is not "stuck" with ODbL, the OpenStreetMap community
selected it.  The OpenStreetMap community even helped to craft ODbL,
with the Open Knowledge Foundation and OpenDataCommons.org, by
participating in the discussions that went into drafting ODbL.

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[Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Alex Barth]

Hello everyone -

I've been sitting on writing about the detrimental effects of
OpenStreetMap's share-alike license (ODbL) for a while and finally decided
to, um, share. I've been listening long to many OpenStreetMappers I respect
a ton telling me it's not so bad and it's just what we're stuck with right
now. But given how bad share alike is for OpenStreetMap I don't think we
should give up for pushing for a more open license. Here's why I think
share-alike hurts OpenStreetMap and how this keeps OpenStreetMap from
having the full impact it could have:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21221

Looking forward to your comments,

Alex
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