I was impressed recently by the progress
of OpenStreetMap (OSM).
The maps of most big cities (in Europe at least) are already very
complete,
e.g. Dublin
and Brussels.
Many smaller cities and cities in less developed countries are still
in need of work, but the current status clearly proves that the
project's aims are practical.
Why is having freely reusable maps important? For one thing, they
can be used by other community projects such as Wikipedia. Another
advantage is that rather than trying to make it difficult to copy
their data (like the corporate map providers do), the OSM website
provides lots of features
to export their maps.
(If you want to link to an OSM map instead of exporting an image,
use the "Permalink" link in the bottom right-hand corner.)
When you export an image from OSM, there's no copyright notice or
attribution info (which seems like a mistake to me), so when you use
OSM maps, consider adding a link or some text to tell people where
you got the map from.
The current licence used for the mapping data is
the Creative
Commons by-sa-2.0 licence. There are constant discussions about
changing the licence - not because people disagree with the ideals
of that licence, but because there is debate among legal experts as
to whether that licence is valid for mapping data and would work
worldwide. For people intrested in that sort of thing, there's
a very good summary
written by Richard Fairhurst in January 2008.
To get involved, there's info on
their Beginner's
Guide. You might also find an existing OSM group in your area by checking
the Mapping projects
page on their wiki. I've recently borrowed a GPS handset, so I'm hoping to
be able to post more info in the future about how it all works.
On
the Event
Calendar on their wiki, there's a list of upcoming events
including their annual
conference which will take place in Limerick, Ireland on the
weekend of July 12th and 13th.
According to their software
licensing policy
and
the FAQ,
all OSM software
is free
software, using the GNU GPL by default.
In other news, the OpenMoko Neo Freerunner is heading for large scale
production. I've heard it's far from being ready for daily use, and
you should be comfortable with installing and upgrading software.
So this version is mostly for hackers, but if you're interested in
mobile phones powered by free software, OpenMoko is the free-est
available.
There's a group
discount when people in one region order 10 phones. Because it
has built-in GPS and all the software is free software, I'm hoping
it will increase the number of OpenStreetMap contributors.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan,
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