Actually, disregard that - I've now spotted an example that didn't load in my browser the first time around.

It would be useful to be able to transform the key as well as the value. This would allow things such as "if 'name' matches /^[A-Z]\d+$/, change key from 'name' to 'ref'"

In general, the consensus is that abbreviations are generally a bad idea. The one exception is with directions in the US, which often appear twice in an address.

Solution is easy. Get a real mouse. :o)

I mentioned this to someone today, and they brought up an interesting counter-point. In the classic survival exercise, you are told to try and use the map for raw material, lest someone try and use it to escape. Aid workers by and large do not have access to most of the country, and those that do already know their patch. Therefore, there is an argument to be made not to map the area for fear of encouraging unknowing aid workers to their deaths.

Of course, the counter-argument to that is that pretty much all the foreign aid workers on the ground already know this, so it's not an issue.

I think you may have missed a couple. ;-)

I think you may have missed a couple. ;-)

I think some compensation for wrongful arrest is in order. Were that me, I'd give them two weeks notice and have at them through the courts, along with an injunction to get the records removed. (Disclaimer: I am an utter bastard, and do this sort of thing for fun.)

"It" in this case referring to the physical roadway. There's a gap in the pavement where the junction would have been, so I presume it's not a copyright trap, but beyond is simply trees and bushes. Aerials in the location are missing the tell-tale gaps in the vegetation that would reveal a street or a driveway.

@Andy: That doesn't change the notion that OSMF is a super-secret Bilderberg-esque elite cabal that some seem to persist in spreading. It has only appeared in the minutes as a result of whistle-blowing - the document was presented to a limited audience (i.e. not before everyone) and was presented after the meeting was closed, with the aim of getting a cut, which smells like back-room horse-trading to me. I don't think this is "asking something in return", it's a laundry list of demands. It's also a perfect demonstration of the sort of situation that the CT seek to prevent. If everyone turned up with a list of demands each time something came up for debate, we'd never get anything done.

@netman55: Last time I checked, the mailing lists, IRC channel, the forum and the wiki all carry no charge. Also, last time I checked, voting is neither necessary nor sufficient for democracy. I have seen democratic decisions taken without recourse to a vote, and I have seen votes that have been thoroughly undemocratic. The comparison to voter registration was general - if people haven't bothered to participate, they don't really have a leg to stand on. I have played very little if any part in the process. My main grievance is that everything is taking so long, but I accept that since I've had no part in the process of setting the timescales, I'll just have to live with it.

Weren't you at one point going around saying WAAAAAAAAAAH I TRACED FROM NEARMAP I WON'T BE ALLOWED TO MAP ANYMORE WAAAAAAAAAAH? That's rather more drastic than just saying "Oh my, some of the features I have added will have to be deleted."

So it looks like maybe we lose some data somewhere. OH SHIT THE SKY IS FALLING IN WE'RE ALL DOING TO DIE IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. Data is the product. Like all businesses, sometimes you have to write off some stock. Thankfully, we still have the means of production.

Find out who got agreement to allow us to trace CC-BY-SA data came at least a full year after the first hints that a change might have been on the cards. Go bitch to them for having allowed you to waste hundreds of hours tracing stuff that we might have had to get rid of anyway.

"noexit=yes"? Seriously? "barrier=gate" will do. Maybe "locked=yes" or "access=no", but not "noexit".

also, "Barangay Hall" iff that's its correct name in the local language. Otherwise, that should be in name:en with the appropriate local language going in name=

"noexit" should potentially represent one and only one thing - a sign on the ground that tells you that there is not a through route along the adjacent way. Occasionally, these signs do appear on roads that aren't cul-de-sacs, but then that's why we have the "destination" access value. Ideally, we should not be adding machine-readable tags to represent calculable characteristics. It should be plainly obvious to a routing engine that there is no advance from a cul-de-sac (for at least some mode of transport). In the case of nearby nodes, add a note to the node indicating that mappers shouldn't join them, and hopefully the people editing in the area will read it and take heed. Machine-readable tags are of little use for issues which will inevitable require human attention. Certainly I remove "noexit" anywhere I come across them, and replace them with something more suitable.

Nice writing, but faulty analogy is faulty. Nobody has threatened to hurt the dog. A more accurate analogy would be that the dog has a mild skin condition. The hair must be kept trimmed back in one particular area to enable treatment, with its old cut, hair is growing there, while the new cut would have shorter hair there, making treatment easier. But the condition is mild - while not life-threatening, it occasionally causes pain for the dog when people try to photograph it, and nobody really knows how to keep it comfortable when a TV news crew shows up.

In such circumstances, I think it's entirely reasonable for those that prolong the dog's suffering to be held at fault, particularly if they're going around trying to scare other people by claiming that the dog isn't suffering any discomfort, or claiming that the cure is worse than the disease.

@devonshire: From what I can gather, most complaints have been resolved informally, meaning without the need to resort to legal action. For most, this has been a relief, because there's no certainty as to how any such action would turn out. The one thing we do know for certain is that if the violator is in the US and has rendered their own map from our data, we'd have no chance under CC-BY-SA.

@stevage: "Dismissing the complaints of "the Australians", who will lose vast amounts of data (myself, hundreds of hours of work) as "FUDing trolls" is not good faith."
1. Some seem to think that having traced from NearMap means they can't agree to contribute under the new terms. They're idiots for thinking it, and even bigger idiots for ignoring all attempts to correct them.
2. The main reason you're losing hundreds of hours of work is that some idiot decided to negotiate an agreement on CC-BY-SA long after steps were afoot to make a change. That's like buying new furniture for your home to match the decor when you're about to move out.

As for the suggestion that these people aren't FUDing, I defy you to present a single cogent argument from the likes of 80n or JohnSmith that wasn't FUD.

@amai: Complete nonsense? Which part? "a process that has taken over four years"? Perhaps you'll now be telling us that the archived messages from February 2007 are forged? "has been fully open at all times"? Last time I checked, the mailing list and wiki archives are visible for all to see, and available for anyone to participate. "all material discussion held in public"? If there's a super-secret back channel (other than the lawyers, obviously), then prove it. As for the "FUDing" trolls, we have people on the mailing lists that are still parroting the "you're signing away your rights" nonsense. It's bollocks, plain and simple. On the one hand, we have random people on the diary bitching about how they like CC-BY-SA and that we should keep it, and on the other we had the lawyers telling us that it didn't work. I think I know who I'd trust on this one, and it isn't the randoms.

If there's anyone here that's been talking complete nonsense, it's every single person that felt the need to whine about stuff they didn't understand, and yet made no effort to try and understand it.

Maps can be copyrighted because maps are not factual. Maps are expressions of facts. Facts and ideas cannot be protected by copyright, only expressions can. In some places a collection of facts may be protected this way. The USA isn't one of them.

Ed is spot on. The Terms invole a licence grant, not a transfer. You retain whatever rights you would have over your contributions, OSMF could not ever prevent you from distributing your own contributions under any conditions you like - whether that be a PD-equivalent such as the WTFPL, or the "you-must-pay-me-£100-per-byte" licence (though I doubt you'd get many takers on that one). If 100 contributors have declined because they thought the CT do not enable them to waive all rights, then they're idiots. As with every time I call some group idiots on the diary, you can quote me on that.

Also, which elitist mailing list is this? Last I checked, all the ones that matter are open to everyone.

I was thinking it had been a while since anyone decided to pointlessly bitch and whine about the licence change. I'm sorry you found that a process that has taken over four years, and has been fully open at all times, with allamaterial discussion held in public, was apparently not transparent enough for you. I'm sorry that you felt that perhaps we hadn't dealt with the FUDing trolls (particularly the Australians) better. Maybe we should have given in to their demands and stuck with the utterly unworkable (and inapplicable in some important jurisdictions) CC-BY-SA, and retained the previous attribution guidelines, which read something along the lines of "Well, your guess is as good as mine." (I'm not being facetious, BTW. I'm told that OSM was approached by people in TV news wanting to know how they were supposed to dii it. We didn't know either.)

Thanks for playing, watch the door behind you as you leave.

Hint: it's "Betws-y-coed", not "Betws-Y-Coed". In Welsh, hyphenated names don't get subsequent capitals, and "y(r)" isn't capitalised other than at the start, as in "Y Barri" (Barry) or "Yr Wyddfa" (Snowdon).

Good work otherwise, keep it up.