OpenStreetMap
I`ve always liked the idea of making maps here until recently. I thought that process of making is carrying gps device with you and later on drawing roads on that gpx track and no copying of other material is allowed.
I`ve driven more than half of my city, street by street with my bicycle, but recently I red on our local OSM list that roads can be imported from local government or whatever (of course permission and proper license is needed)? So this actually means my effort for nothing, because roads will be rewritten later.
Is it true?
Discussion
Comment from Gnonthgol on 2 September 2009 at 13:58
Your effort is not wasted.
A gps trace is better then an import because it reflects reality better. Altso road imports have just been used for USA and the Netherlands. Still most of the data on OSM are from traces.
Altso imports does not come with POIs and other data important to make a map complete.
Your effort helps alot and an import can never be as good as a trace.
Comment from Milliams on 2 September 2009 at 14:00
It is possible that in some parts of the world, some authorities will release their own street data to OSM. However, there's nothing to say that their data is any better than yours and given the effort you say you've put in I'd suspect that yours is better. Also bear in mind that the governments data will probably only include streets and nothing like cycle paths, foot paths, woodland, POIs etc.
Either way, if it does come down to someone wanting to import the government's data (if it's possible) then you can simply ask them to not import it for your city/area. No-one's going to overwrite your work without consulting you and others who did the work.
Regards,
Matt Williams
Comment from Firefishy on 2 September 2009 at 14:14
Viva Local Mappers Viva.
Where are you based?
Comment from marscot on 2 September 2009 at 14:29
on the ground gps track win all the time,
proper maps you can buy for my town are wrong sending you down streets that are nolonger through roads, and ones look like you cant walk/ cycle from but have paths joining to other streets, thats what you get without eyeballing the street.
Comment from rtdg on 2 September 2009 at 14:53
In Canada we are currently importing a lot of data from government sources, GeoBase and CanVec, but one of the initial conditions has always been to preserve what has already been imported. This has caused some additional work in that we now have to combine the two sources, and some people have felt that erasing their initial work and asking for a complete import from the government sources is preferred,but it is proving to be effective. Also as you are importing roads, some of which may have changed or not even exist within the government sources, you also have the opportunity to add Points of Interest (POI) that are never going to be included within the government data.
Within the wiki about importing from other sources there is the instruction to respect the data that others have already contributed. In the Netherlands, and I believe also in the USA, permission was asked prior to deleting any user contributed data. In Canada we never asked and instead just respected the data that was already there and instead just added what was not already there.
Comment from JohnSmith on 2 September 2009 at 15:38
If you want to see bad imported data take a look at the TIGER dataset, it's much much much worst in a lot of cases compared to GPS surveys.
Comment from Anna_AG on 2 September 2009 at 16:21
Jancis
Nothing beats a personal survey of streets, roads cities etc. Your personal knowledge of a city or town is key and the more that you map the more detail that you will add in a way that no commercial survey can ever do. Also bear in mind that survey data is often out of date, and that OSMers can update information on a daily basis.
Keep up the good work -
Comment from Jancis on 2 September 2009 at 16:59
Firefishy - Valmiera, Latvia ( http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=57.5315&lon=25.4206&zoom=13&layers=B000FTF )
roughly speaking it`s >120km on BMX :)
Comment from Baloo Uriza on 2 September 2009 at 22:42
Not at all! Government data sources are but one possible source for geodata, among other contributions. It often requires a great deal of cleanup, though any good import won't overwrite or munge existing ways and landmarks.
Comment from smsm1 on 6 September 2009 at 07:28
This is one for the reasons I don't like imports.