There was a long discussion (in Hebrew) at the forum of freemap.co.il about the license and the availability of the data.
As far as I can understand from the answer that Ehud Shabtai posted (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that: 1. The code of the software is free under dual license (GPL and commercial) 2. The map (as an image) is promised to be free for use. 3. The data of the map (the gpx logs, features, etc.), are not free and are at his own possession, and he keeps the right to sell it to commercial products) I find the 3rd point very problematic, on one the first hand he'd put a lot of effort in building the site, improving the software, promoting it, collecting the data, rendering and storing everything. But on the other hand, people don't get access to gpx data they and others contributed to the project. I believe that a major aspect of the OSM project is the availability of the raw data, letting you adjust it to your own needs, adding layers and developing tools as routing and such. By giving only the cooked image, freemap.co.il lack these advantages, and as a developer and a user, I find it very problematic. I think that the work done in freemap.co.il by Ehud is really great, but if I have to choose, I prefer OSM although its coverage of Israel is very bad right now and a lot of work still to be done. Moshe
_______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk