Martijn, On 06/01/11 19:59, Martijn van Exel wrote:
I don't think that will be a tenable attitude in the longer run. OpenStreetMap and public sector data (that's what we're mostly dealing with when we consider imports) will not continue to be two totally disparate entities, who have 'ownership' over the data that is in their respective databases. I foresee[1] a future reality in which the flow of information between OpenStreetMap and the public sector can be more bi-directional and also more continuous
It is, in my opinion, short-sighted to try and incorporate such data into OSM. OSM is for data that we maintain, that we improve, change, or delete. Anything else has no place in OSM. That is not to say that government data can be *useful* - it's just that OSM is not primarily a data storage, but a data editing and maintenance system. Any data that does not require our editing and maintenance should be outside of OSM, and merged with OSM data at the rendering/processing stage. Our editors should not be burdened with such inert information.
Conflicts would never arise, because either *we* are the master for something, or the external source is. Stuff for which we are not the master will not be in OSM; it will live separately.
But also for much simpler situations this may be a useful thing.
That's a different issue. Maybe in the long run we'll throw away our svn-like central database, and everyone can simply fork the planet on github ;)
Bye Frederik _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
