"It’s also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap’s
contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get
that on there." "It’s also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap’s
contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get
that on there."While I'm agree with you that credits must be given where it is due, stretching it to the fact that this behavior would be in their DNA seems not backed up by facts in my point of view.
;)
Do the down-mods represent people operating in good faith thinking I'm being mean-spirited, rude, and damaging the conversation? Or are they Apple fanboys upset by a little uncomfortable teasing at their expense? I can only speculate. :P
He is probably getting downvoted by people who
1) don't see it as sarcastic 2) Think it detracts from the conversation and encourages behavior of a similar sort.
This is great for OSM because it's starting to show how it's a real player, not just as as "open source map data", but "map data", i.e. it's competiting with the big, non-open source, map data providers now.
And think about it, everyone who they'd want to know that it is OSM, now knows :-P
April 2010 is around when they would have started working on the maps back-end. Attribution would have meant dev releases would have indicated Apple using non-Google Maps data. They probably wanted to avoid that.
Some of the comments were implying that Apple didn't give credit because they have a culture that is insolent. I was just trying to give context to the decision.
But if anybody would rip of an Apple product, the descendants of mighty Steve would come raining down with swords, axes and lawyers.
Do you really think they did it, to support OSM. Or should I ask myself: "Where is the money?"
The money, they do not have to pay Google anymore for the use of maps, while not crediting all these people, who supported OSM with their time and data-collecting.
I would love to be a fly-on-the wall at the Apple meeting where they are forced to discuss this.
It seems to me, that the Apple-Folks in Cupertino knew exactly, what they were doing. Who would sue Apple in a case like this anyway?
Being from Germany, I have no idea, what the US-System would look like, but I believe, that suing Apple would mean, that every one of the contributors to OSM would have to sue on his/her own.
And who would do that?
Apple would calculate this. And even, if some people would walk this way, it might still be cheaper, than paying Google.
Just my two cents.
With an army of IP lawyers at their disposal, a multi-billion dollar war chest, and an opponent running on a shoe-string, they can probably force OSM to go all-in if it comes to a lawsuit.
The cynical part of me sees this as great publicity for iPhoto using the P.T. Barnum principle:
"I don't care what they say about me, just make sure they spell my name right! "
To this very particular point I want to say, I think that large companies switching over to open technologies (edit: because of a profit motive) is a good thing. There needs to be a critical mass of people who value the openness per se in order for the sea change to happen, but ultimately it has to be because we make it more profitable to do so. I have zero expectations that a bunch of CEOs are going to start caring about any cause. If they switch over, it means we're succeeding in making it profitable, and I take that as a good sign.
It actually sounds very passive-aggressive to me.
So it might sound passive/aggressive.
But wouldn't Apple be active/aggressive, if I would use their IP? Wouldn't they srew me for all I#m worth in court?
I really don't know, but I wouldn't want to find out...
The GIStiquette, seems to imply that there is almost always some copyright in the footer of the map.
Could this copyright be embedded in the documentation (à la MIT) and still comply?
But other people might disagree. There are even people that think the whole license is invalid and that it can be used as Public Domain, because the license is for creative work and not meant to be used for databases. This is the major reason OSM is changing to a different license right now (ODbL).
Edit: See here http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Why_CC_BY-SA_is_Un...
eg. A business' address/phone number can't be copyrighted on its own, but a specific collection of them into a Yellow Pages can be.
"...the selection or arrangement of data only results in a protected compilation if the end result qualifies as an original intellectual creation."
(This actually saved me in university when the school wanted to charge me with copyright violation after I scraped their job database to make it easier to work with.)
I got fed up with trying to use it, so I looked at the HTML and decided that it was easy enough to parse. I made the deliberate decision to link to the original job descriptions so that you'd still have to log in to find any real information about the jobs. However, a listing of {employer,job title,location} seemed harmless enough.
I wrote it such that it ran once and spat out a static HTML file so that it wouldn't be constantly accessing the original server. Then I hosted it on my university account and told people about it via Twitter. I had no intention of hiding it; I wanted it to help people! Also, I posted the scraping script (which required a university account to login before it could run) on GitHub for others to use or improve. Y'know.
A few days later, my account had been disabled! When I went to see the people in charge, they told me that I was violating their copyright and since I has posted my code to scrape, they considered me to be a malicious hacker. They also said that I could have single-handedly taken down the co-op program at the university.
For my formal response, I learned some obscure details about Canadian copyright law (like what I posted in the grandparent), and took the opportunity to educate the administrators on hacker culture (with the help of Eric Raymond). I also made sure to explain the implications of my script (runs only once, requires a login, links to the actual copyrighted works). Oh, and I used some of my connections with IT security and professors as character reference.
In the end, they decided to punish me for reproducing their data (which the login screen technically prohibits, but it's unrealistic- having the page in memory is a reproduction!) by making me take a business ethics course, which was actually a fun and interesting course. No criminal charges, no expulsion/suspension. I figured it wasn't too bad, though I would have appreciated an apology for essentially calling me a terrorist. ;)
The lesson I learned is to not try to make others' lives easier. :P I definitely won't shy away from scraping whatever data sources I can get my hands on, but I probably won't share the results with large groups of people.
It's not a big deal despite the 500 articles that have been written about it.