RETEX: My Urban Recycling Trekking

To be continued, maybe:

• diary entry (upcoming): choosing tags for this trekking
• diary entry (upcoming): existential questions about my encounter with Panoramax

Context

Since April 2025, I’ve been discovering OSM and trying to contribute wherever I can. Needless to say, I’m learning something new every day about OSM mapping (thanks to the Wiki, forum, and fellow contributors).

While exploring my neighborhood, I added a voluntary drop-off point (for recyclable — though not always — waste) to OSM, located 800m from my home. I then discovered that the local intermunicipal authority has an app listing a large portion of the collection points. I wondered whether it was legally and technically feasible to retrieve those, and whether it would align with the OSM ethos.

The forum quickly (and kindly) set me straight (as I said, after only 2 months with OSM, I’m learning a lot every day):

• Extracting data from a website’s database is obviously illegal unless there’s an explicit license that allows it.
• Even if there were a friendly license (which is not the case here), it would still need to be ODbL-compatible to import the data into OSM.

This led me to pursue two parallel paths:

1. Finding a sustainable solution via an open data source, which means:

   • Trying to convince the intermunicipality to publish its data, ideally on www.data.gouv.fr
   • Convincing them to make this publication sustainable (i.e., generate an export every time there are updates)
   • Assessing how, in theory, this data could be used (completeness, attribute matching, duplicate detection, handling conflicts between open data and on-the-ground data — which can either be better or simply incorrectly entered)
   • Finding out how and by whom the data could be imported
   • Seeing if all of this could happen before 2035

2. Starting manual mapping myself through field visits (the foundation of OSM’s truth)

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RETEX : mon trekking urbain recyclage

à suivre peut-être :

• entrée de journal(à venir) : les choix de tag pour ce trekking
• entrée de journal (à venir) : Questions existentielles sur ma rencontre avec panoramax

Le contexte

Depuis avril 2025, je découvre OSM et cherche à contribuer sur ce que je peux. Autant dire que j’en apprends tous les jours sur le mapping OSM (merci WIKI, forum et autres contributeurs).

En m’intéressant au voisinage, j’ai ajouté à OSM un point d’apport volontaire (collecte de déchets recyclables - pas toujours -) à 800m de chez moi. J’ai alors découvert que l’intercommunalité locale avait une application recensant une partie importante des points de collecte et me suis demandé s’il était envisageable légalement et techniquement de les récupérer, puis si c’était conforme à l’esprit OSM.

Le forum m’a rapidement (et gentiment) recadré (quand je vous dit qu’avec 2 mois d’OSM derrière moi, j’en apprends plein tous les jours) :

• récupérer des données d’une base de données via son site Web est bien évidemment illégal si aucune mention explicite de license ad hoc n’est faite
• même si une license sympathique est exprimée (ce qui n’est pas le cas ici), encore faut-il qu’elle soit compatible avec ODBL pour l’insérer dans OSM.

Ce qui m’a conduit à deux axes d’action parallèles :

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Who am I ?

I have been retired since 2020 after a long career in networking and IT security.

Since then, I’ve spent my time walking (nothing too ambitious: no mountains, but still around 2,000 km per year) and doing math (a lifelong hobby, mainly algebra focused on functional equations).

I discovered OSM very recently (spring 2025) when switching from Windows to Linux MINT and trying out my first smartphone with LineageOS (a de-Googled Android).

what follows is of course only my personal opinion

At first, I thought it was just a freely editable map application, before realizing that it is in fact:

• a global geospatial database with open contributions, listing and exposing only data that is free of rights, under the most permissive licenses possible.

• a vast open-source application ecosystem leveraging this geospatial database for a wide variety of uses:

  • to contribute or make smart, efficient, even fun use of it.

    • Tools I’ve looked at and used: Id, JOSM, OsmTracker, Osmose, StreetComplete, taginfo, overpass, panoramax, NSI
    • Tools I’ve only skimmed so far: MapRoulette, Mon Commerce OSM, Libre Charge Map, H.O.T.

  • to use the database for various purposes aimed at diverse audiences:

    • The one that led me to OSM: OsmAnd, then leaflet and uMap
    • Also cartes.app, and a bunch of hiking and cycling apps that I’ve only briefly glimpsed.
• and of course, a set of proprietary applications built on the OSM database (not always with proper attribution, by the way)

So I created an account, joined OpenStreetMapFrance (not mandatory), and tried to understand enough of the principles, limitations, and recommendations to contribute effectively.

I’m now a regular reader of the WIKI and the forum (even though I sometimes struggle to follow whole conversations – such as those about hiking route relations, linear or networked…).

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