OpenStreetMap license change completes

[Posted September 13, 2012 by corbet]

From:		Richard Fairhurst <richard-4roecdBtmvDk1uMJSBkQmQ-AT-public.gmane.org>
To:		talk-3+rWM/WnaLOn4i5uJCXUsti2O/JbrIOy-AT-public.gmane.org, announce-3+rWM/WnaLOn4i5uJCXUsti2O/JbrIOy-AT-public.gmane.org, legal-talk-3+rWM/WnaLOn4i5uJCXUsti2O/JbrIOy-AT-public.gmane.org
Subject:		Licence change
Date:		Wed, 12 Sep 2012 10:11:59 +0100
Message-ID:		<505051DF.5080600@systemeD.net>
Archive‑link:		Article

Hello all,

If you go to:
	http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright

you might notice a slight difference. :)

OSM data downloaded after 9am today is now licensed under the Open 
Database Licence. The first ODbL-licensed planet.osm file is currently 
being generated.

These pages summarise the main changes:
http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ
http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/ODbL/License_Transition/Guidance...

The main supporting documents on the wiki have been updated but 
translations and some of the more obscure documents will need attention.

Our recommended attribution is now "© OpenStreetMap contributors" plus a 
link to www.openstreetmap.org/copyright . That page then gives further 
details of the ODbL and other relevant information.

cheers
Richard

[Please check follow-ups when replying. Feel free to forward to local 
mailing lists/forums.]

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 6:51 UTC (Fri) by danieldk (subscriber, #27876) [Link] (21 responses)

I have no opinion on the license change, but I wanted to point out how fantastic this project is. I realize that the coverage of OSM is perfect everywhere, but for The Netherlands and Germany it easily matches commercial counterparts. Generally, Garmin's topos have more terrain information, but OSM is more up to date, more accurate, and has more POIs. Also, there is a great site that allows you to make custom maps for Garmin GPSes:

http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

Basic editing is of OSM virtually as easy as Wikipedia. I haven't added any new roads, but started adding points of interest. I guess, this is something where all of us can help --- we might not be experienced enough in cartography, but you are all experts of your environment. Adding good points of interests benefits visitors to your city/village/region.

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 6:52 UTC (Fri) by danieldk (subscriber, #27876) [Link] (19 responses)

(I have to add that this is from the perspective of someone who uses maps for walking, hiking, and cycling. I don't know much about their suitability for car navigation.)

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 9:16 UTC (Fri) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link] (11 responses)

For car navigation, for years, it had no idea that my old road even existed. A side-road literally a stone's throw from a main A-road in the middle of a large town near to a huge train station in the UK. It had the road that comes off it but my road didn't exist at all, or the half-dozen around it. They are on there now, but it took years for them to appear. How many other roads still aren't on there and we don't know until someone DECIDES to walk down that road and map it for OSM?

And in terms of postcodes - I just searched for my current one. It takes only the first four digits (which is worthless) and throws me somewhere 2 miles away. So for car navigation, it's just not reliable enough. Hell, my TomTom that hasn't been updated in 4-5 years does a better job on the random postcodes and roads etc. that I type into it and only really misses those that actually did not exist when the map was made.

The school I work for, that doesn't even exist on their map and I had to add it. A large, private school within the London M25 just didn't even exist (blank area on the map, not even marked as a building or anything).

Sure, it's Wiki-like and will get better but not only do you have to have an army of volunteers mapping, entering street names, postcodes, features, etc. but you have to have a smaller army combating spam and vandalism (who also need an ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE of the area or you just end up correcting roads because the sat-image is old, then they get "reverted" because the sat-image doesn't show it, etc.) if it ever becomes really popular. It's pretty much geek-only territory at the moment and any expansion to cover the amount of things it needs to to make it reliable actually attracts a crowd that will make it unreliable!

I'd use it for a pet-project, for a map on a website (nicer licensing than Google Maps etc.), for quick directions to a party/wedding/whatever. But for actual "I need to go to random places" navigation it's seriously outdone by a £50 satnav that's years out of date (and my satnav covers the whole of Europe and I *have* used it to navigate through the entire continent and not had a problem with it). I wouldn't risk any journey of any importance on it, like I wouldn't risk relying on what's written on Wikipedia to keep my job.

It's a brilliant project. It just needs a serious and constant injection of "official" mapping to actually make it work anywhere near reliably, and if that happens that OSM isn't really doing anything that can't be done just using the published data anyway.

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 11:35 UTC (Fri) by moltonel (subscriber, #45207) [Link] (1 responses)

It's not perfect for everything, and car navigation in the "western" world is certainly one where proprietary data is better (appart perhaps in Germany), but it has long gone past "pet project" usecases. Follow the news headlines, some companies are even making a healthy amount of money using OSM data.

I originally started using OSM for trekking, because paying 240€ for topographic maps of Ireland (not a huge country) seemed ridiculously steep (twice the price of the garmin hardware, with no update contract). Now the areas I walk are nearly as detailed as a paper hiking map, and even have a few extra paths.

Even for car routing there are good arguments for OSM. It took Google/Navtek/Teleatlas between 9 months and a year to learn about a 90km stretch of motorway (Ireland still). Fancy slugging behing tractors for an extra 12 months ? OSM had it pretty much immediately.

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 14:12 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Right, OSM also has my local railway station in the right place. That shouldn't be a difficult feat, it's not as though railway stations can _move_ but somehow one brand of commercial map software had put the station in an industrial estate some distance away. Much more convenient to park the car, and when you get out you can hear passing trains but there's not even a sign to the railway station from that direction.

I was initially sceptical about OSM, but eventually began contributing local map data on foot using a dedicated sampling GPS. It's a lot of fun when the weather is good, and it gives you more of an appreciation for all those little residential streets you'd normally have no reason to visit. Working on foot meant I don't cover much ground in a day, but I do get some exercise and the detail level is pretty good.

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 11:52 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] (7 responses)

"It's pretty much geek-only territory at the moment and any expansion to cover the amount of things it needs to to make it reliable actually attracts a crowd that will make it unreliable!"

This is something that's always been worried about (by all of us) but so far we haven't really run into this unreliability problem in a significant way. The force in our favour is that the "geek" users tend to take a lot of pride in their area and watch for dodgy edits.

"(and my satnav covers the whole of Europe and I *have* used it to navigate through the entire continent and not had a problem with it)"

I think you've been lucky. I've had some pretty mad suggestions from both satnavs and google maps.

"It just needs a serious and constant injection of "official" mapping to actually make it work anywhere near reliably"

Mmm I don't think that's true. OSM's contributor base growth is still without sign of slowing and we have yet to see where the equilibrium will end up.

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 19:05 UTC (Fri) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (6 responses)

>> (and my satnav covers the whole of Europe and I *have* used it to navigate through the entire continent and not had a problem with it)"
> I think you've been lucky. I've had some pretty mad suggestions from both satnavs and google maps.

TomTom has led me onto a "path" where my car got stuck in the mud due to lack of solid ground. Google Maps still connects ways in my home town where there is no connection and 50m height difference. TomTom stubbornly tries to route me through a police-only fenced off entrance onto a motorway. It is not as if "commercial" data were flawless. And an upgrade for Europe map data is 50€! Nahh.

As for routing, I recommend you check out http://map.project-osrm.org/ and test a route ("street housenumber, city"), and drag the markers around and set via markers. OSM data, and beautifully FAST. REAL FAST. :-). And Open Source.

As for postcode searching, I just entered the 5 digits of my German home town into the standard OSM search box and it found it exactly. Same for the Swiss town I currently live in.

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 19:47 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

you don't have one of the tom-tom models that lets you record errors and send them in? (or you have the use of such user supplied data disabled?)

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 15, 2012 9:57 UTC (Sat) by hholzgra (subscriber, #11737) [Link] (2 responses)

For post codes we luckily had a source to import from (center points first, polygons later). The polygon import was not perfect and data needs a lot of manual adjustments as it has random offsets of ~200-300m, but at least for cities that only have a single post code this is usually good enough.

In the UK otoh Royal Mail was seriously fighting such imports for copyright reasons, so there all data needs to be collected manually ...

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 16, 2012 14:21 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (1 responses)

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 17, 2012 17:50 UTC (Mon) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

Technically they were trying to use what are called in the UK "Database rights" rather than copyright.

They did this because they make money by selling this data to commercial entities and wanted to protect their revenue stream.

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 15, 2012 21:25 UTC (Sat) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link] (1 responses)

even worse: Google Maps plots a route to the nearest point reachable by car, which in one case was in the middle of a railway tunnel, where cars are transported on trains through that tunnel. Some 1000 m elevation difference and some 2 km distance, ridiculous.

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 16, 2012 12:24 UTC (Sun) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link]

> even worse: Google Maps plots a route to the nearest point reachable by car, which in one case was in the middle of a railway tunnel, where cars are transported on trains through that tunnel. Some 1000 m elevation difference and some 2 km distance, ridiculous.

Hilarious, yet so do most OSM-based navigators. So you could easily end up in the same situation with navit, osmand, and what else there is...

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 19:22 UTC (Fri) by philh (subscriber, #14797) [Link]

I've been using OSM for years, and while it has gaps they almost always are in places I don't want to go.

I find it's actually rather good to know that one's map is partial, as it removes the temptation to blindly trust the GPS in defiance the evidence of ones senses.

> For car navigation, for years, it had no idea that my old road even existed.

Is there any reason you didn't add it yourself?

As it happens, I visited a friend's new home for the first time today, and noticed the building was missing from the map -- not any more though :-)

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 9:16 UTC (Fri) by hholzgra (subscriber, #11737) [Link] (6 responses)

Navigation / Routing is still very much "work in progress", Problem is that lots of the routing related road attributes (max speed, turn restrictions, detailed lane information, house numbers) are still missing in a lots of places

Basic routing works, see e.g.

http://ngbr.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/howto-add-virtualbox...

but it may not necessarily find the best/fastest route and may even tell you to take turns you're actually not allowed to take

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 9:30 UTC (Fri) by Mithrandir (guest, #3031) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't think that link goes where you think it goes.

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 9:34 UTC (Fri) by hholzgra (subscriber, #11737) [Link]

Indeed, that was supposed to be http://openrouteservice.org/

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 11:50 UTC (Fri) by Eckhart (guest, #74500) [Link] (3 responses)

> but it may not necessarily find the best/fastest route and may even tell you to take turns you're actually not allowed to take

Except that there are better online OSM routers than OpenRouteService:
http://map.project-osrm.org/ - good OSM router, incredible speed
http://open.mapquest.com/ - to my knowledge the best OSM online router, commercial background, also has open API

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 13:37 UTC (Fri) by hholzgra (subscriber, #11737) [Link] (2 responses)

All of these produce the same results on my test routes ... and none of them can make up for missing data like house numbers, turn restrictions or speed limits ...

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 19:17 UTC (Fri) by Eckhart (guest, #74500) [Link] (1 responses)

> All of these produce the same results on my test routes

Then you just have been lucky. Here is an example:

http://www.openrouteservice.org/index.php?start=11.105826...
compared to
http://mapq.st/SLQxeM

> and none of them can make up for missing data like house numbers, turn restrictions or speed limits

They cannot make up for missing data, but they certainly help mappers with identifying missing turn restrictions – unlike OpenRouteService.

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 14, 2012 19:19 UTC (Fri) by Eckhart (guest, #74500) [Link]

> http://www.openrouteservice.org/index.php?start=11.105826...

BTW, in case you were wondering why OpenRouteService got the roundabout wrong:

> OSM-Data for Routing: 11.03.12

OpenStreetMap license change completes

Posted Sep 20, 2012 19:30 UTC (Thu) by daglwn (guest, #65432) [Link]

I do like the Points of Interest but I wish there was a decent Android app for it. All of the versions I've tried have horrendous interfaces. Navigation and POI search are almost impossible.

Maybe I just haven't found the right app.