Hi alexkemp,

I feel the need to apologise on behalf of terracer - I was its original author (7 years ago… wow), but I quickly found that I wasn’t using it much and wasn’t able to maintain it, and it’s been abandoned ever since. The houses around me are in N8 are mostly terraced, but they’ve had such a profusion of different-sized extensions on the back that I find it easier to just draw each individually.

It’s a credit to the JOSM devs and anyone else who’s touched it that it still works as well as it does - I’m sure the JOSM internals have changed significantly. Many thanks for stepping up and trying to fix it, and I wish you all the best!

(PS: As Vincent de Phily already mentioned, it might be worth taking a look whether teaming up with Derick on uberterrace might lead to a better plugin than continuing with terracer.)

tl;dr: Adding “openstreetmap” text; 10minutes. Making it clickable and open in browser; 10 hours.

10 hours sounds a little exaggerated. But even if it does take that long, is 10 hours really all that bad in return for the detailed, global, constantly updated data which the hard-working and generous contributors to OSM provide?

Perhaps someone has already written it, and it’s available on GitHub. If not, it would be awesome if you could upload it there so that future app writers can benefit.

WorstFixer,

Bloating the database does not, on its own, make a good reason for stopping. However, Frederik’s actual words were

“it is unacceptable for one party to mess with the database first and then ask questions later; among other things, this leads to unnecessary database bloat.”

Perhaps the example he picked from ‘among other things’ was weak, but the code of conduct is clear: Please discuss large-scale, automated changes before making them. And asking someone to adhere to the code of conduct is not, in itself, a breach of etiquette. If there were further breaches of etiquette, then you may feel it necessary to refer them to the moderators.

Personally, I see the removal of default-value tags like “ele=0” or the pointless series of “is_in” tags as a very good thing! However, one person - or a small group - does not make a community, and discussing things together means that everyone is included, reasons are understood, and there is less friction and unpleasantness.

Like nmixter, I look forward to seeing your positive contributions in the future.

Cheers,

Matt

As the result of some “Caring Community Reviews” in the past, there is a code of conduct for automated edits on the wiki. The code of conduct is some simple rules so that the whole community is able to work together without “enthusiasm death”, or any other kind of death.

As Frederik says above, and important part of this code of conduct is a discussion with members of the whole community in the affected areas, so that there is no misunderstanding the purpose or the effect that the automated edit is supposed to have. It is important that this discussion take place before the automated edit so that mistakes can be caught early. It does not need to block implementation or testing, but should be taken into account before upload. Think of it as a “Caring Community Preview”.

If you encounter problems on the mailing list with people behaving inappropriately, then please contact the moderators for a breach of etiquette. It is sad to say, but there are a few people who appear to take pleasure in nay-saying or needless argumentation, and they should be referred to the moderators.

Please do not think I am trying to prevent you from doing something useful, I am only trying to decrease the potential for friction in the community due to large, unilateral, undiscussed actions.

Cheers,

Matt

DiverCTH - you say there's a lack of transparency, yet every stage of this has been discussed (often ad-nauseam) on the legal and OSMF-member mailing lists, on the wiki, IRC, forums, and at last year's state of the map conference. the license working group has published all of their minutes and are contactable (legal@osmfoundation.org) by anyone to discuss issues. while you seem to have made up your mind, which is a shame, could you point out what in the process is not transparent so we can improve it, please?

why do you say that ODbL has been passed by "fait accompli"? the process of migrating was put to several votes, including OSMF members. at no point in the process will your data be "stolen", or released under anything other than the current CC-BY-SA license without your permission.

OSM is committed to freedom of information, that's exactly why we proposed moving to ODbL - because CC-BY-SA doesn't adequately protect the information we've all spent so long collecting.

Google's MapMaker has far more restrictive licensing terms than OSM under either CC-BY-SA or ODbL. see https://services.google.com/fb/forms/mapmakerdatadownload/ for details, but the gist of it is: you can only access and use MapMaker vector data if you're a non-profit, government or individual for non-profit, non-commercial purposes. you also can't use it to create services "similar" to those Google already offer, or to use it for real-time navigation. that doesn't sound devoted to freedom of information to me.