Data structure - ramblings

[Andreas Kalsch]

I am now working for a long time with geonames data and there are 2 main
problems:

1) The hierarchy is incomplete. There are many locations which are
placed correcty in the political hierarchy but some steps in the
hierarchy are missing. Who will enter the right information. Is there a
way to pay someone to get the data right or to get better official data?

2) What about add shapes to the geonames data model? In the long view,
geonames could be obsolete as a whole because OpenStreetMap has place
names, their hierarchy and their shapes.

[Marc Wick]

1) There are two ways to fix missing hierarchy links. The preferred way
would be to find administrative division shapes and update the database
with one command, the other less efficient way is to do it manually with
the edit interface. In both cases it is a gradual improvement. Do you
have some particular country or region in mind? Then you could check
whether the administration of this region has recently made shape data
available.

2) Adding shapes to the data model is easy. It is more difficult to find
enough shapes that are available under an open license. (share-alike
projects like osm are not open)

Governments maintain the shapes of their provinces and other
administrative divisions anyhow in order to administer the country.
Making this information freely and openly available wouldn't cost them
anything. At the contrary it would benefit the regional economy as a whole.

[Andreas Kalsch]

Marc Wick schrieb:

> 1) There are two ways to fix missing hierarchy links. The preferred way
> would be to find administrative division shapes and update the database
> with one command,

This is what could easily be done with OpenStreetMap boundaries.

> the other less efficient way is to do it manually with
> the edit interface.

This is what I exactly don't want to do, and it seems that many people
think like me.

> In both cases it is a gradual improvement. Do you
> have some particular country or region in mind? Then you could check
> whether the administration of this region has recently made shape data
> available.
>
> 2) Adding shapes to the data model is easy. It is more difficult to find
> enough shapes that are available under an open license. (share-alike
> projects like osm are not open)
>

I am not sure what you mean. For me OpenStreetMap and Geonames is open
data. Can you explain why the OSM license is not open? I think it is
unobtrusive to give some credits to OSM and the data creators and so I
would call it open, or at least "free" to use - even for commercial purpose.

> Governments maintain the shapes of their provinces and other
> administrative divisions anyhow in order to administer the country.
> Making this information freely and openly available wouldn't cost them
> anything. At the contrary it would benefit the regional economy as a whole.
>

Government 2.0 is far away - especially in Germany ;) But you really
should start to integrate GIS features whereever you find open ones.

I need to admit that I appreciate Geonames - because it has all the
names. I have seen projects which build on top it - but the
OpenStreetMap data will be better very soon.

[Marc Wick]

GeoNames is not allowed to use OSM.
OSM is not using an open license. In fact it is using the closest
license of all closed licenses. You don't have to pay, but you are not
allowed to use it so it doesn't matter that you don't have to pay
because you are not allowed to use it anyhow. Even if you want to pay,
you cannot. There is no way to get around the restriction.

The share alike license is nice for student works and other trivial
projects. For anything a little more complex than this it gets very
difficult.
A license that deserves to be called open focuses on the user. It makes
it easy for the user to understand what he is allowed to do, it puts no
restriction on what the user is allowed to do and it gives the user
protection against lawsuits. Share-alike is the exact opposite. Its
focus is on protecting the data against the user and there is no way the
data can ever be freed from this restriction. Share-alike is often
called a 'viral' license, because if you have one byte of share like
data in your database it forces your entire database to become share
alike. This is the reason I call it the closest of all closed licenses.
With other licenses you can pay to get the right to do what you want.
With share alike there are no options at all.

With share alike licenses you are an easy victim of lawsuit extortions.
It is difficult to understand what you are allowed to do and when you
ask 10 persons you will get 10 different answers. This is heaven for
lawsuit extortionists (and lawyers of course) and hell for everybody
else. In Germany it is particularly dangerous because the German law
(Abmahnung) gives more right to lawsuit extortionists then to the people
wrongfully accused.

Best Regards

Marc

[Andreas Kalsch]

I can understand your criticism. But I think it's somehow just fair to
give the 1000s of mappers out there some credit for their work. This
will be part of cultural works of the future - to give credit to the
author in a visible way. Less websites with commercial interests will be
there which give an impression of "It's just there ..." and which will
not make people ask "Who has created that thing?".

But there is a difference between simple names and more complex geodata,
isn't it? To not credit geonames feels more convenient than to not
credit OSM.


Marc Wick schrieb:

[Marc Wick]

Sure, I fully agree is is nothing than fair to give somebody credits for
the work. The critic is not about giving credit, it is about the
'share-alike' clause. It basically means if you use one bit of
share-alike data in your application you have to put a db dump of your
application on your server for everybody free to download under the same
license. It is obvious that hardly any application can do this without
violating other rules (like privacy of user data or licenses of other
data used for the application, etc).

Marc