What you're talking about is "imports". OSMers are wary of them. It's possible for someone to mess up existing data, to add bad data, damage the local community

What you're talking about is "imports". OSMers are wary of them. It's possible for someone to mess up existing data, to add bad data, damage the local community etc. Most of the map in the USA was imported in late 2007 ( http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER ). The map looks done, but the data quality is pretty poor. Read more: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import People are happy if you manually enter them.