[Discuss] OpenStreetMap in Victoria

[Nick Black]

On 7/31/07, Daniel M German <dmgerman at uvic.ca> wrote:
>
> "Nick Black" <nickblack1 at gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> Why not lobby the gov't to change the nasty and disagreeable sections?
> >> Our taxpayers dollars created it, why should we not be able to integrate
> >> it into free products?
> >
> > For the same reason that Linus Torvalds didnt sit around lobbying
> > Propreitery software vendors.  There are groups who lobby the gov't
> > about this and I agree with your sentiments 100%, but I feel that I
> > can spend my time more effectively making the data myself, producing
> > tools for other people to make and collect data, and helping along
> > with guys like Corey to organise mapping events.  When the data is
> > feely available in OSM, its value will have been reduced to such a
> > level that the gov't will have little choice other than to release
> > their data under a comparable license.
> >
> > For an idea of my views on this, check out this blog post:
> >
> > http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=184
>
> I am curious,
>
> Attribution is not against the spirit of open source. Why not change
> the licence of the project from creative commons to creative-commons
> attribution?

OSM data is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution Share Alike - CC-By-SA.

>
> The wiki says "we do not support this sort of attribution". I am
> curious of why (rhetoric question but if somebody has the answer, it
> would be great to hear it).

I'm not sure where this quote is from exactly on the Wiki - could you
send me a link?  There is some discourse within the project about the
licensing.  Some people are very pro share-alike and some are
pro-public domain.  There is a movement to tag user pages with a
declaration of Public Domain, which may account for the quote you saw.

Arguments surrounding licensing are summed up in this post:

http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=171

Personally, I want OSM data to be used as much as possible, by as many
people as possilbe.  I don't participate in OSM or Open Source because
I think its more correct than other forms of production, but because
its more fun and its products are, or will one day be, better than
alternatives.  I'm quite wary of ideologies which I see time and time
again as distracting people from what they set out to do, and being
abused by the power hungy.

All this is more fun in person, so come to the mapping party ;-)

>
>
> dmg
>
> --
> --
> Daniel M. German
> http://turingmachine.org/
> http://silvernegative.com/
> dmg (at) uvic (dot) ca
> replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at vlug.org
> http://ladybug.vlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>


-- 
Nick Black
--------------------------------
http://www.blacksworld.net