Am 02.01.2010 14:57, schrieb Richard Fairhurst: > Frederik Ramm wrote: >> Just because user X does something propietary with OSM data doesn't mean >> that he is less of a nice guy. However (on the other hand) just because >> he is a nice guy doesn't mean that something proprietary he produces >> should be treated as if it was part of the family. > > But what's "the family"? > > People have written open-source OSM apps for closed platforms (Windows, > OS X) and runtimes (Flash Player and formerly Java). Others spend time > reverse-engineering closed formats (.img) for closed hardware (Garmin). > I suspect the site JS has some hacks to make it render properly on (the > closed-source) Internet Explorer. You could argue, and there are some > reading this list who do, that these are therefore non-free and > shouldn't be included in the OSM family.
This argument is a bit pointless, as you cannot draw the line where to stop it. Your graphic card BIOS is probably closed source, your harddisk BIOS is probably closed source, ... ;-) The question for me is simply: Does the project open it's *own* work or not? > OSM's raison-d'etre is free geodata. Nothing else. If we start getting > doctrinal about how we think people should interact with the data, I > think OSM, as a project, becomes more insular and less viable. For me it's not about how people should interact, but just to make it clear what's open (in the sense of open source) and what is not. A good example: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin#Software has a column "License", which makes it pretty clear. A bad example: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin/Download has no such column and it's a hassle to find out, which of the projects are open and which are not. Hint: a lot are not :-( Regards, ULFL _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
