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Comment by Tomte | Hacker News Reader

Translated from https://www.openstreetmap.de/uf/

"How can I remove the black error tiles?" – "You can't, at all. But in a few days we're going to restore functionality."

And they mean it. They haven't even made it so that a reload blacks out other tiles. No, they really want to make it utterly unusable, even with effort on the user's part.

So now the German OSM holds pretty much the same place in my heart as the German Wikimedia club.

The OSM Foundation needs to react harshly here. To think that I used StreetComplete just yesterday. That will certainly stop.

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... because a single website with tons of alternatives does a small protest action you don't like you're not going to contribute to the entire project anymore? I honestly can't understand that.

A single web site that is obviously pretty officially affiliated with the OSM project proper (as far as "unofficial" can go) and loves to use my contributed data kicks me in the shins. Yes, I feel I'm justified in being mad.

Wikimedia Germany is also legally seoparate from the Wikimedia Foundation, and still everyone considers them the official German offshoot.

I guess I don't see how having to visit openstreetmap.org or any other site instead of .de if you want to look at a map for a few days is a "kick in the shins", especially since "providing a map viewing website" is not the goal of the OpenStreetMap orgs, neither the Foundation nor the local chapters. (one certainly can argue if maybe they should do have that goal, but they explicitly don't, regularly repeated when people suggest adding end-user features to the site)

They represent OSM in Germany, they think it's in OSM's best interest to draw attention to this issue, they do so on their own website, leaving all tile servers etc alone. I can see being momentarily annoyed at it, I can see disagreeing with them (politically or if that's a useful protest form), but I don't see anything that would count as a gross violation of trust or something that's out of scope for a local chapter to do.

Hm, I'll think about it. Have an upvote.

You contributed the data so that they - and everyone else - can do what they want with it as long as they stay within the terms of the license. I don't see that they are violating the license by choosing to render that data a certain way (in this case as a black tile).

German OpenStreetMap is not a third party who is only bound by the copyright license though - it's a contributors' community with various explicit and implicit expectations. See e.g. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct

Parent never claimed that the license was violated though. You can be unhappy about something legal.

> A single website whose maps are used by hundreds of apps and websites with millions of users[0][1]

FTFY

[0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/They_are_using_OpenStree...

[1]https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_OSM-based_servic...

I'm aware that OSM is widely used (I'm a contributor to it), what does that have to do with the fact that a single website, http://openstreetmap.de, choose to do this kind of protest and not display some map tiles? So no FTFY, those hundreds of apps and millions of users are not affected by this protest. If they were, I'd probably agree with OP in their criticism.

You’re confusing OpenStreetMap data (used by millions) with the openstreetmap.de rendered tiles (used by a handful of Germans).

>No, they really want to make it utterly unusable, even with effort on the user's part.

The only basemap which has blocked tiles is OSM deutscher Stil, you can easily switch to the other three. Would argue that is very usable with very little effort on the user's part.

Cool, I didn't realize that.

The FAQ I quote-translated could have mentioned that, instead of saying "there is no way".

Everyone will work around then. They want you to see copyright error tiles.

If the measures they are protesting against go forward, you will have even more to be upset about.

After all, isn't the purpose of a protest to be inconvenient and draw attention?

> They haven't even made it so that a reload blacks out other tiles.

Reload blocks different tiles.

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