OpenStreetMap
freedesktop.org Geolocalization. No citation for OSM. Why?
Posted by FraMauro on 8 September 2010 in English.I found the webpage on the (not yet ready?) geolocalization service for freedesktop.org.
freedesktop.org is "open source / open discussion software projects working on interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops. The most famous X desktops are GNOME and KDE, but developers working on any Linux/UNIX GUI technology are welcome to participate."
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Home
Their geolocalization service is called GeoClue and here is its description: "Geoclue is a modular geoinformation service. The goal of the Geoclue project is to make creating location-aware applications as simple as possible.
Geoclue is Free Software, licensed under GNU LGPL. It is developed for Linux, but should be portable to any platform that uses D-Bus."
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/GeoClue
At the end of the description page linked just above the cite various "Possible data sources". There is not even a word about OSM.
I think that someone should contact them.
Any idea on the right person(s)?
Discussion
Comment from lyx on 8 September 2010 at 22:34
As I read it, GeoClue is not about maps but about location, i.e. they don't give you information what is around a specific location but instead focus on finding out where you actually are. And one of their providers is Nominatim, which uses the OSM database AFAIK to relate addresses to locations and vice versa.
Comment from FraMauro on 8 September 2010 at 23:32
Thank you very much for the answer.
I had this kind of doubt, but I thought that the risk of me missing some facets of the service was high enough to justify a post!
Comment from balrog-kun on 9 September 2010 at 09:26
Yep, Nominatim is the only way GeoClue accesses OSM and it is mentioned under "geocode" and "reversegeocode". The GeoClue developer is my co-worker and I know he's a big fan of OpenStreetMap.
Comment from Pieren on 10 September 2010 at 12:15
But that's raising an interesting question : a service using OSM data has to mention it. But a service using Nominatim is never mentionning OpenStreetMap. Is that fair ?