Hi,
first of all, I wasn't intending this to become an opencyclemap
bashing thread. I wasn't even aware that there is something non-open
about opencyclemap; I was prompted by your quote of openmtbmap. I didn't
have a hidden agenda -
I'm not saying we should try to shame non-open solutions into
submission. There are good and valid reasons for people to do things
non-open.
Your argument about flash players and JVMs leads nowhere; I am not
talking about openness of the target infrastructure but openness of the
process. If I let you see and use all aspects of my work but you still
need to buy a processor from Intel in order to practically use my work,
that does not make my work less open.
Maybe instead of trying to define what counts as open, we could more
easily say what is not open. If someone gives me a map rendered from
OSM, but doesn't give me the style sheets or rule files or whatever so
that I can see how he arrived at this map, then that map is most
certainly not open. The process is secret. The map maker has maybe spent
a lot of time figuring things out, and enjoys writing books or speaking
at conferences about the cool aspects of his map that others cannot yet
match, or tries to sell his consulting expertise. And it is his right to
do so; and you are right in saying that in many cases such a non-open
map will benefit the project more than no map at all. But that doesn't
change the fact that the map is not open, and that others in the project
who want to compete with that map will have to go through the same
learning curve again instead of being offered the chance to "stand on
the shoulders of giants".
> But, hey, maybe fundamentalism is the in thing for 2010.
I wonder why you seem so fundamentally opposed to what I'm saying. The
OSM mission statement contains the idea of "[using geodata] in creative,
productive, or unexpected ways". There can be no doubt that someone who
makes his stylesheet and processes available for others to build on acts
in this spirit.
It seems that my suggestion has conjured up images of some kind of
"openness police" that will hunt down anyone who does something
non-open, together with a mega-infectuous share-alike license that says
that the second you even look at anything to do with OSM you have to
upload your brain & hard disk to Richard Stallman. (Or should that now
be Jordan ;-)
I assure you that this is not the case. As you know, I'm a PD advocate.
Software I write, and data I contribute, is usually PD. As such, I tend
to rely more on community norms and less on legal stuff: I make my
things available for everyone, and I welcome it if others do the same. I
will not hate someone who does not make his things available like I do,
but I will probably be more willing to help a fellow free software
author than someone who does proprietary stuff.
All I'm trying to do is introduce proper labeling - what is open and
what isn't - and create a little incentive for people to share the cool
stuff they do with OSM. An incentive - not a rule. Sharing something is
often more than just uploading it to SVN. You have to put in a bit of
documentation, remove that commented-out code over there, polish the
whole thing a little bit for its public appearance. Maybe even remove
the "drats, I don't know what this option does but it doesn't work
without" comments as they make you look silly ;-) That is extra work -
work you don't have to do if you keep your stuff secret. All I want is
to give people something in return - something like "you get a silver
star if you make a cool OSM-based application, and you get a gold star
if you share it".
I think it is good and right to make this distinction. I don't feel that
this warrants the "fundamentalism" battle cry. Maybe some won't buy food
labeled "organic" and others won't buy food not labeled so; but that
doesn't make proper labeling fundamentalistic. Proper labeling is just that!
As someone else pointed out, it is sometimes quite difficult to find out
exactly how open something is. If everyone who announced some cool new
OSM map or OSM editor or OSM web site could be encouraged to specify
exactly which bits of his application are open and which aren't, that
would make many things easier.
The Garmin map page that Ulf mentioned, where you have a green/red
"source available" column, is very much what I was thinking of - maybe
green/red is too harsh and it should indeed be gold/silver, but the
table overall does not create the impression that the non-open stuff is
somehow despicable. If something like that could be made a habit in OSM
- call a spade a spade, and say where something is open and where it has
little black boxes full of secrets, that would go a long way to making
me happy in this respect.
(I'll review mentionings of Geofabrik services on the Wiki and amend
them accordingly.)
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
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