On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Marcus Blake <marcus.bl...@abs.gov.au>wrote:
> From the ABS point of view the principle reason for doing this is that an > the OSM database would hold a copy of the official version of the > boundaries and that this point of truth would be available for all OSM users > and downstream distributors. It would therefore become one of the channels > by which the ABS distributes the ASGS boundaries and associated coding > structures > > Hi, First of all, I think it's great that the ABS wants to engage with OSM in this way and wants to contribute data. However, I don't think this particular data is a good fit for OSM. A few reasons that come to mind: 1) OSM's core purpose is as a street map, and I don't think it can be a dumping ground for all spatial data. 2) Adding extra layers of metadata into the core database makes editing difficult, and we don't have good support for filtering this stuff out yet. 3) We couldn't guarantee not to modify or break this "official' data. It would be a "dirty copy". 4) Importing data that can't be continuously worked on and improved inflates the database. We're seeing more and more of these types of requests. It seems to me there is a growing need for some kind of "OSM layers" database to house this stuff, so it can be readily integrated with OSM data, and layered on top of it for rendering or other purposes. But the OSM database itself should, as far as possible, contain only data that is being worked on by contributors. Steve
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