Hey there, I'm pretty new to OSM, but I've read through the wiki articles related to GeoBase (as well as this month's talk-ca archive). I figured since people are asking for opinions, I may as well share mine.
I'll start off by saying how AMAZED I am at the current state of the map for Toronto (where I live). It's quite incredible what a bunch of people can produce given access a powerful collaborative toolset. And now there is the possibility of adding roads (and other) for the entire country, at 'one fell swoop', thanks to the existence and availability of a huge dataset, likely created by a huge number of people, over a long period of time, at great expense. That's pretty exciting! But how to proceed? There is talk about one option being direct replacement of portions of the OSM db (imported area by area, I guess), but I'm not certain what happens to OSM map objects that are not roads... I would be content to have a GeoBase-based road network replace roads that are (otherwise) user-contributed via GPS tracks, and yahoo tracing... provided that non-road elements (subway lines, bus routes, bike paths, foot paths, malls, recreational trails, buildings, bus routes, etc.) remain. That said, I've contributed very little road data, and am not "attached" to that which I've added. I also understand that the data contributed to date may be more accurate, or more up-to-date than what's contained within GeoBase. I also have respect for the contributors of this data, and can understand that other people would be 'attached' to it; they contributed it with the understanding that it be freely shared; but not likely with the understanding that it might be just-as-freely deleted. So I would more happy with GeoBase roads uploaded, "on-top" of the existing data. If folks don't like the maps that are produced in this case of "double" data, they could modify their renderer to ignore one data set or the other; I presume it would also be possible to pre-filter the data to ignore one set or another. This presumes it has been appropriately tagged during import. I would think pre-tagging all existing roads as "user-contributed" (or something) might make sense in this case. I've no opinion on how to address the issue of GeoBase "updates", and how to incorporate these, other than to point out that keeping old data as well as new data could allow for maps to be produced that relate to a certain point in time. Obviously the most common rendering would be what is "current". I expect further versions of the OSM database published via openstreetmaps.org may support more complexity. Perhaps this "update" problem will be easily addressed by future technological tools. Version control is not a problem unique to mapping, and future technology may present a solution. In any case, I look forward to the continued improvement of the platform, as well as the data. I will continue to contribute, as I am able. David Henderson _______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
