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I work in the public sector in Denmark and we use OSM for pretty much every map routing project we do as google won’t agree to not track our usage or protect ou

I work in the public sector in Denmark and we use OSM for pretty much every map routing project we do as google won’t agree to not track our usage or protect our data under the privacy shield. Gotta say OSM has been mostly amazing to work with, but there have been a few quirks over the years. A few times the direction on one directional streets have been wrong, and when I corrected it, using our GIS data as evidence, my correction was denied because I had to physically go take a picture of the street. It felt a little silly being a municipality and having an OSM correction denied by some hobbyist, especially because it was blocking functionality on a piece of software used by 60.000 users. Don’t get me wrong, I blame us for not getting a verified account on a critical piece of software, but it still made me hate community driven software for around two hours.

CamperBob2 9y ago
Gotta say OSM has been mostly amazing to work with, but there have been a few quirks over the years. A few times the direction on one directional streets have been wrong, and when I corrected it, using our GIS data as evidence, my correction was denied because I had to physically go take a picture of the street. They have to guard against abuse, and they can't necessarily accept that you're an authority on any particular location. It's easier if they demand the same proof from everyone. That said, demanding a photo of the location seems pretty stupid. If your goal is to vandalize the OSM database, how hard can it be to Photoshop a few bogus street signs?
- rmc 9y ago
  OSM doesn't generally demand proof from people. I suspect the root cause was avoiding copyright infringment, not abuse.
interfixus 9y ago
Kudos to you and your department. I wonder which one it is. More or less everywhere in the Danish public sector (and other countries' as well, I'm sure) seem solidly hooked on Google services. Even when logged in, deep down in some private interaction with tax or health or legal authorities, my every move and mouseclick is reported realtime to Google Anatytics. And for maps specifically, I know a traffic guy in Copenhagen Municipiality. I'm not sure he even understands the concept of switching to an open map provider.
basicplus2 9y ago
you could take a screen shot of a google maps picture..
- habi 9y ago
  Not really, since Google has a copyright on their data...
rmc 9y ago
It's great to see people, esp governments, using OSM. It's strange you had that problem with the one-way street. OSM definitly doesn't require that everything has photographic evidence. I suspect a concern was copyright infringment. Is your GIS data public domain? If not, then it's copyrighted[1], so 'copying' data from that into OSM would essentially be a type of copyright infringement! What's to stop you adding all the info from your GIS data into OSM? All the road names, all the shop names, all the addresses? You see the problem? If you go there, physically, and look at the sign, or take a photo then the source of the data in OSM is your eyes, not the GIS data. Requiring someone to go there is essentially a form of "clean room reimplementation" of the data, and hence has no copyright issue. OSM prefers "local knowledge" so if you, personally, know that that street is one-way, because for example you're familiar with the area, then that's an acceptable, copyright free source. [1] Before people jump in, yes the USA has a 'all map data from the federal government is free' that's not the case everywhere, and yes, under US copyright law non-creative pure facts aren't copyrightable, and hence there's no worry, but in some countries (e.g. the UK) you can copyright non-creative things which you spent effort collecting ('sweat of the brow'). OSM is erring on the side of caution and being strict. And OSM is not a place to experiment with the grey areas of international copyright law)
ZeroGravitas 9y ago
Others have pointed out the potential copyright angle, but I'll note that various imports of data from governmental GIS systems have revealed errors (or at the least inconsistencies) in that data by comparing them with the data on the ground. An automated tool was built to list all the differences between Street names in OSM and the UK government data. Looking at one region I was familiar with showed 20 fairly glaring errors in the government data, so working with OSM can improve the government data too. In these situations they have tags you can add e.g. saying "X" is not the name of the street and explaining that there's an error in the data provided by source Y. This stops later people assuming that any difference between the data means that OSM is in the wrong. Semi-automated imports do happen, but overwriting existing data as part of an import is generally frowned upon without consulting the reality as a tie breaker.

CamperBob2 9y ago

Gotta say OSM has been mostly amazing to work with, but there have been a few quirks over the years. A few times the direction on one directional streets have been wrong, and when I corrected it, using our GIS data as evidence, my correction was denied because I had to physically go take a picture of the street. They have to guard against abuse, and they can't necessarily accept that you're an authority on any particular location. It's easier if they demand the same proof from everyone. That said, demanding a photo of the location seems pretty stupid. If your goal is to vandalize the OSM database, how hard can it be to Photoshop a few bogus street signs?

rmc 9y ago
OSM doesn't generally demand proof from people. I suspect the root cause was avoiding copyright infringment, not abuse.

interfixus 9y ago

Kudos to you and your department. I wonder which one it is. More or less everywhere in the Danish public sector (and other countries' as well, I'm sure) seem solidly hooked on Google services. Even when logged in, deep down in some private interaction with tax or health or legal authorities, my every move and mouseclick is reported realtime to Google Anatytics. And for maps specifically, I know a traffic guy in Copenhagen Municipiality. I'm not sure he even understands the concept of switching to an open map provider.

basicplus2 9y ago

you could take a screen shot of a google maps picture..

habi 9y ago
Not really, since Google has a copyright on their data...

rmc 9y ago

It's great to see people, esp governments, using OSM. It's strange you had that problem with the one-way street. OSM definitly doesn't require that everything has photographic evidence. I suspect a concern was copyright infringment. Is your GIS data public domain? If not, then it's copyrighted[1], so 'copying' data from that into OSM would essentially be a type of copyright infringement! What's to stop you adding all the info from your GIS data into OSM? All the road names, all the shop names, all the addresses? You see the problem? If you go there, physically, and look at the sign, or take a photo then the source of the data in OSM is your eyes, not the GIS data. Requiring someone to go there is essentially a form of "clean room reimplementation" of the data, and hence has no copyright issue. OSM prefers "local knowledge" so if you, personally, know that that street is one-way, because for example you're familiar with the area, then that's an acceptable, copyright free source. [1] Before people jump in, yes the USA has a 'all map data from the federal government is free' that's not the case everywhere, and yes, under US copyright law non-creative pure facts aren't copyrightable, and hence there's no worry, but in some countries (e.g. the UK) you can copyright non-creative things which you spent effort collecting ('sweat of the brow'). OSM is erring on the side of caution and being strict. And OSM is not a place to experiment with the grey areas of international copyright law)

ZeroGravitas 9y ago

Others have pointed out the potential copyright angle, but I'll note that various imports of data from governmental GIS systems have revealed errors (or at the least inconsistencies) in that data by comparing them with the data on the ground. An automated tool was built to list all the differences between Street names in OSM and the UK government data. Looking at one region I was familiar with showed 20 fairly glaring errors in the government data, so working with OSM can improve the government data too. In these situations they have tags you can add e.g. saying "X" is not the name of the street and explaining that there's an error in the data provided by source Y. This stops later people assuming that any difference between the data means that OSM is in the wrong. Semi-automated imports do happen, but overwriting existing data as part of an import is generally frowned upon without consulting the reality as a tie breaker.