Way too many exclamation marks, compdude.

Excellent! Engagement with the "real" community is something we should all do more of in our local areas.

This is pretty strong language. I have (unfortunately) followed months of mailing list discussions and whilst I have see some pretty incredible behaviour, and may even have seen some behaviour verging on bullying, I cannot say I have ever seen the withholding of agreement to the contributor terms used to bully individuals. Where has such bullying happened?

If it has not, I really don't see how this kind of language helps anyone. Should we not be reaching out to people instead of attacking them for disagreeing with us? Is the above post going to change anyone's mind? If not, what do you hope to achieve?

I understand why the legalese of the CTs can seem a little scary. However, you have said: "I am quite happy to abandon any and all of my rights to it and for OSM to do with it what they will". It seems to me that the CTs are only asking you to grant certain rights to your data to the OSMF, not even to "abandon all of your rights" (to my mind abandoning all of your rights would mean you could not also grant rights to other people under any terms you liked, which you can). Do you not agree? And do the CTs not make clear that it is precisely the OSM community that can decide what can later be done with your data.

I realise you have concerns about the process that got us here. But given where we are, what is stopping you from moving forward? Your message implies you would be quite happy to put all of your edits into the public domain. Am I therefore right in thinking that it is only the legalistic language that you have a problem with? If so, that is, for better or for worse, the world we live in. If you have ever registered with almost any other web site, chances are you will have "signed" a legal agreement of some sort. Have you ever signed up to Youtube, Vimeo, Hotmail, Gmail, .... ? If so, I suggest you go back and have a look at what you agreed to. For that matter, the full wording of CC-by-SA 2.0, the legal agreement you have already agreed in order to grant rights to OSMF and the rest of the world is pretty darn legalistic (and very long):

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode

Of course, most of us are more familiar with the human readable summary:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

There is a human readable summary of the CTs here:

http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms_Summary

It is worth noting that even where there is not legalistic language, you can be entering a legal agreement. You enter an unwritten contract every time you go to buy something in a shop (or more likely a written one if you buy online). You entered a legal agreement when you originally signed up for OSM, too (details of that agreement are under the human readable summary above).

I understand a small number of people have many different reasons for not wishing to agree to the CTs, but I would find it very sad if fear the language used lost the project valuable contributions.

(I am not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice!)

SPAM!

To be fair to the Skobbler user, the report would have made perfect sense in their context. It is the application that needs to be much clearer on the kind of detail required (or have an optional feature to upload the entire route for this purpose).

Regarding rejecting reports, Andy Allan reports (on talk-gb) that there is now a "default description" flag that can optionally be used to suppress such bugs (and P2 soon will):

http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Re-Address-information-in-MapDust-bugs-td6060358.html

@Chaos99 - it is true that most bugs would need to be checked out on the ground, but there are occasional exceptions - as alexz says, it can be worth looking at the ways around the bug for any obvious errors (such as broken junctions) that may have caused the poor routing.

The same blogger's critique of OSM can be found here:

http://www.41latitude.com/post/1310985699/openstreetmap-critique

and here:

http://www.41latitude.com/post/1349685626/openstreetmap-critique-2

It sparked considerable discussion on the mailing lists:

http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Response-to-A-critique-of-OpenStreetMap-td5635020.html#a5635484

http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Highway-Tagging-Consensus-to-Improve-OSM-and-address-some-of-41-latitude-s-concerns-td5639384.html

http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/A-UK-perspective-on-the-41Latitude-article-td5689937.html

In fact the blogger felt move to respond to some of the emails he received:

http://www.41latitude.com/post/1313261274/osm-response

@alexz. Thanks for the tip on the low pass filter. I'll give it a go (though I suspect it may not be enough).

@SamatJain. Happy to post another format once I've re-recorded.

@l!l. I will post up once I have re-recorded

Wow! Never mind GPS surveys, if the author is right, they have outlawed just about all unlicensed GIS activity - even tracing orthophotos! I am not surprised when I hear suggestions OSM could be illegal in China, but _Florida_?

Would the ref key be of any use to you for recording the numbers?

osm.wiki/Key:ref

I suppose the only issue would be if any of the roads are also part of a numbered route. loc_ref or reg_ref?

I just get "Page not found". Have you removed them?

Use the cuisine tag

cuisine=chinese
cuisine=pizza
cuisine=vegetarian
etc

osm.wiki/Key:cuisine

@Andrew - I don't think anyone is threatening to remove OS Street View data. Rather, a number of people have raised concerns about whether its licence is compatible with (a) ODBL and (b) the new contributor terms. The Licence Working Group are looking at this issue with the lawyers, and taking lots of suggestions from mappers on board. If I understand correctly, there are several ways in which this issue might be resolved .

I am saddened that the planned relicensing has dampened your enthusiasm. Is it a problem with the new licence, or the simply the fact that there are heated discussions about the potential ramifications of this change, that is worrying you? If it is the latter I think it is important to note that there are very strongly expressed views on both sides from a tiny minority of the mappers out there. It is easy to get the impression from the mailing lists that the project is being torn asunder by these discussions, when actually most people are probably just getting on with mapping as before.

In the end, the relicensing will either happen or it won't, and whichever is the result, things should calm down after that and the project will move on (in my humble opinion).

@drlizau - apologies for using your diary entry as a discussion board!

Please don't spam your own diary.

These diaries are intended to give people the opportunity to write about their mapping on OSM, not an advertising board.

Forgive my confusion, but it seems to me that the numbers quoted on http://neis-one.org/2010/11/23/short-update/ do relate to existing mappers only. The figures come from here:

http://planet.openstreetmap.org/users_agreed/users_agreed.txt

And this list specifically excludes mappers who have joined OSM since agreeing to the CTs became mandatory for new sign-ups. This list stands at around 4,800 today.

If I understand your equation correctly, then plugging in the 4,800 figure would give April 2011. Of course, that assumes everyone will eventually agree to the new CTs, and you have not stated the basis of that assumption (so I'll have to take your word for it).

Of course, what we don't have figures for is the rate at which those specific 12,500 mappers are signing up. But, it seems that should not be too difficult to calculate from the data available.

The best resource we currently have that takes account of volume of contributions is:

http://matt.dev.openstreetmap.org/treemap.png

I wonder how many people do this and then don't post a diary comment about it.

Perhaps we need really prominent warnings about this particular issue the first time you start JOSM or Potlatch? Just a thought.

There is a helpful article on this topic here:

http://weait.com/content/control-appearance-your-business-openstreetmap

Particularly helpful if you want a map on your own website with your company logo on.

I saw this one in real life before I realised it was a news story. A sign specifically telling truck drivers to ignore their sat nav. I like the symbols.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-478073/Council-erects-sign-tells-drivers-Dont-trust-satnav.html

Welcome!

Have you discovered the wiki

osm.wiki/Main_Page

The Beginners Guide is really worth a read, as it's not always obvious to begin with how to go about things, as it sounds like you're discovering!

And if you'd prefer to watch some videos:

osm.wiki/Video_tutorials

These are not very polished, but the Potlatch one is well worth watching if you plan to use Potlatch (the editor you access by clicking the "edit" tab). (Other editors are available.)

Welcome to OSM! All of the advice given above seems sound to me. In addition, I would suggest making contact with the Australian OSM community by joining the Australian mailing list:

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au

I'm sure folks there will be able to tell you whether any previous approaches have been made to state mapping agencies, and also maybe give you an idea of whether there is any hope!

However, data imports are a controversial topic within the OSM community. There is no consensus on how useful they are, but as some of the comments above hint, there is a near consensus that they are not useful in isolation (even strong advocates recognise the need for a community on the ground to correct, update and add value to the data). Above all, OSM is about volunteers actually surveying and mapping what is on the ground themselves. The Big Hairy Audacious Goal is to create the most awesome map in the whole world, of the whole world. I'm sure the guys at talk-au will give you the local perspective on this issue.

You might also find the Australia wiki page a useful resource:

osm.wiki/WikiProject_Australia