As OSM has become so cantankerous/cancerous recently, I have decided to drastically reduce my edit activity and move onto somewhere more pleasant. I may add some minor edits if it suits me but only as a last resort.

BYE

On one hand we told explicitly not to copy other work such as Google etc and on the other hand, in effect, copying via "remapping" to get round licensing/CT issues. What a ridiculous state to get in as a result of an ill thought out change in T&C's.

To me OSM has lost creditability as a mapping platform (a lot of data may disappear on 1st April 2012, the date seems appropriate!) and I will at least suspend if not give up altogether my "goodwill" contribution to OSM which I have done for over the last 4 years, any further updates may only be done where it suits me.

I have never known an organisation to be so ungrateful to people who give their free time and effort to an "open project" particularly in the case of being to unable contact people to "change their ways". OSM should be thankful for their contribution in the first place

Been doing a lot of walking around Rochester over the last few days. A little surprised how much is missing for a major tourist town in Kent. Updating where I can.

Was thinking about going up to Westfield Stratford city shopping mall which has opened today which according to some of the media is the largest in europe although commparing the blurb on their websites Bluewater still seems to hold that title by shop numbers anyway.

So I looked it up on OSM but was disappointed to find that there was almost nothing was there.

Perhaps some London non-archair mappers would be kind enough to target this area for update. Bing is no good here which in some ways shows how vulnerable OSM is if it was to lose the use of Bing.

Having read some of the commentary about the site I have decided not to go as it appears to be a bit boring and I refuse to pay to park to shop. So no GPS
traces from me then

I had a local primary interested in using OSM for part of a summer school project, but this idea has been abandoned due to foul language appearing on OSM, - OSM was deemed unsuitable for young children

Get a blue screen where the editable map should be, tried several ways to access but the same result

Via P2 btw

Sincere apologies in advance if this annoys people, this is something I very rarely do, but I feel its important and considering the recent events in Japan...

I have just sent a protest email to BNP Paribas and HSBC bank. Despite the nuclear disaster in Japan, there are plans to build a nuclear power station in a highly earthquake-prone region on the west coast of India.

Please join me in saying "Stop the next Fukushima!" by writing to the bankers today:

http://bit.ly/ikaxY8

Please write to the boards of these international banks, demanding that they help us stop the earthquake-zone nuclear project.

Jaitapur wasn't on the OSM map but it is now!

thanks

Interesting comments to my last few diary entries, thanks to those who took the time to do this.

My main focus with OSM is to just get mapping done of my area to help a project I have been planning for a long time which, in part, will use maps to convey content.

So when I originally came across OSM some 4 years ago, it suited my needs and seemed to be a reasonable candidate to invest my free time and effort and at the same time enable me to contribute to another “open” community of individuals, which I have done in the past and still do, on other open projects including open source projects.

However, the new contributor terms have become a show-stopper for me contributing further map data after the terms become compulsory, in particular the following:

“You hereby grant to OSMF a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable licence to do any act that is restricted by copyright, database right or any related right over anything within the Contents, whether in the original medium or any other. These rights explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour. These rights include, without limitation, the right to sub-license the work through multiple tiers of sub-licensees and to sue for any copyright violation directly connected with OSMF's rights under these terms. To the extent allowable under applicable local laws and copyright conventions, You also waive and/or agree not to assert against OSMF or its licensees any moral rights that You may have in the Contents. “

To me, this means in effect giving shared ownership of my data to a limited company. You simply cannot predict where or what that company will be in 2, 5, or 10 years time.

I suggest taking a look at the OSMF Memorandum of Association at www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_Association.

The key problem area for me is items 7, 8.1, 8.2.

“7. If the Company is wound up while a person is a member or within one year after that person ceases to be a member, every member of the Company will contribute such amount as may be required (not exceeding £5) to the assets of the Company, for payment of the Company’s debts and liabilities accrued before the member ceases to be a member, and of the costs and expenses of winding up, and for the adjustment of the rights of the members among themselves.
If on the winding up or dissolution of the Company there remains any surplus property after satisfaction of the Company’s debts and liabilities, the surplus shall not be paid to the members of the Company, but shall be either:
8.1 given or transferred to some other institution or institutions having objects similar to the objects of the Company; or
8.2 If no such payment is possible, any surplus shall be applied to a charitable object. In each case, the recipient body or bodies shall be chosen by the members as at the date of winding up or dissolution. “

So most contributors won't have a say where their rights they granted to OSMF will go. Items 8.1/8.2 look cosy in that property (which would include Rights ) would hopefully go to a good cause, that is not certain however. The main danger is however is in item 7. The second paragraph talks about surplus's and how that would hopefully be handled in 8.1/8.2, but the main reason why companies are wound up is because that they are insolvent i.e they have debt. Item 7 does not detail what will happen then. Well let me pass on some experience of some my friends who are or have been Directors/MD's of companies that have faced insolvency from unexpected forces outside the control of the company. If an administrator/ liquidator is appointed, it is their duty to realise any monetary value in a company and that would include any Rights by that company, to pay creditors.

Therefore, if I sign up to the new CT's there is a risk that those rights I grant to OSMF may be sold to a commercial enterprise. I did not start contributing to OSM with many hours of free time and effort to potentially fill the coffers of a commercial organisation.

I'm not too keen on item 4.5 (in the MoA) either ( supporting wives / family of OSMF etc, etc) but that's a different story, my main issue is item 7 above.

In short while I am likely to be stopped editing OSM any more, which is a shame, as I have enjoyed what I have done to date and it will be interesting to see how they will delete my data without deleting contributors data, who have accepted the new terms, which is mixed with mine.

To all who have decided to accept the new terms I wish you well, but please do keep an eye on what OSMF get up to with your data.

Corrected Bing & OS streetview injected errors for this area. A lot still to do in this area as named residential walkways are missing. Just got to know this part of the world very well as I am there every day at the moment, but fast losing interest in OSM to be bothered to update fully due to the fact I'll be locked out soon due the stupid new CT's IMO

I got a accept / decline licence screen today although I have been registered just over 4 years ago. I declined but still seem to be able to edit at the moment.

There seems to be no easy visible communication whatsoever that this was going to happen, seems to be a ploy to get people to accept when they don't need to, at least at the moment.

Why has this been done, when in a recent community update there was a very brief mention to delay the process as a result of possible CC by SA version update?

Absolutely a disgraceful way to treat long term contributors to OSM.

When I last added to this relation and updated the wiki, it was standing at 26% complete. Just checked the relation and it is now at 59% complete and have updated the wiki to reflect this.

Well done to all who have helped to push the mapping of this long distance path nearer to completion.

Its gone!

Getting a lot of :

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The load average on the server is too high at the moment. Please wait a few minutes before trying again.

Finally completed tracing the Strood Community Trail located in the Strood area of Medway, Kent which can be seen at http://www.openstreetmap.org/?relation=1273060. I had started this in mid November in the hope to complete for the launch of the trail on the 11th Dec 2010 but the snow halted progress.
A leaflet giving the route only appeared on the Valley of Visions (the organisation promoting the trails) website yesterday.

This one of 7 such trails being or have been established to encourage local people to explore their area in which they live.

The following links give more detail of the project if you are interested

http://stroodcommunitytrail.blogspot.com/

http://www.valleyofvisions.org.uk/Stroodcommunity.php

I've been using Bing imagery quite a lot recently, but I have come to learn its limitations fairly quickly.

I love it for:

+ Verification/improvement of stuff I've done previously.
+ Doing some quite effective mapping just by making mental notes of things while out & about without my GPS and using the imagery to pinpoint these things

I hate it for:

- These pesky dark shadows that obscure building outlines etc
- Where the imagery is way out of date. This introducing a lot of errors where stuff is being mapped but simply don't exist anymore because the image is a year or more out of date. The area I tend to cover is part of the Thames Gateway which is undergoing a lot of change where huge sites are being cleared to make way for new development. Mapping construction sites from Bing is a big no-no.
- Image quirks such as weird wonky angle that distort outlines badly and photo tiles that are just in the wrong place! Just east of Isle of Grain Kent you will find two identical tiles next to each other!

So temper that enthusiasm to map from Bing with a little commonsense otherwise we will have tons of these red bugs eating our map

Anybody got there love/hates?

I've done quite a few building outlines tonight utilising Bing imagery in P2.
However on more than one occasion, saves were not happening (according to the dialogue box), so I cancelled after a few minutes of waiting. At one point I cancelled twice before eventually getting a save completed indication after a third attempt. Going back to tag the building later in P1, I got flashing red nodes indicating dupe nodes. I found that building outlines had in fact been drawn 3 times over the top of each other. So the database was getting the info on each save but the P2 editor at my end was not getting confirmation that the data was being saved. My experience of P2 to date is that I get hit with random bugs with no pattern to them, which to me seems to be some sort of connectivity problem between the editor in the web browser and the server that stores the data

Snow stopped my planned trip today, but a slight upside was with all the schools closures, there are currently long lists of school names of all different types (public, private, adult etc) on local radio websites which I think could be a useful checklist for the OSM mapper.

Also I had a first look at Bing imagery for my area, which from looking to see what is on it and what is not, I estimate the image about a year old for my area. It confirmed my Garmin Vista is pretty spot on accuracy wise, but my navman is not so good

I had a few minutes spare this afternoon before meeting someone, so with GPS in hand off I went to collect more house numbers (I use the waypoints on the Garmin Vista to pin down location), unfortunately a deep low going through the UK at the moment hit me sideways very hard after a few minutes, had trouble setting the last waypoint because the Garmin's screen was so wet! I can confirm the Vista survives a good soaking! After a "this is getting silly" moment I gave up and ran for cover.

Found the oscompare.raggedred.net site useful in flagging errors in my area but does not get it 100% right so had to survey while on a farm visit in the area, but is still a very useful tool.
Cleared quite a few errors in Hoo St Werburg area but still quite a few to do

Done a bit of clean up of A2 route through Chatham. There were 2 routes showing, however the route through the high streets is an historic one, the current route goes via Star Hill/New road. Also removed dual carriage ways in places where there isn't one.