OK. What I should have said was âThe fact that it is not possible to easily retrieve a complete list of contributorsâ.
By way of example, I have the URL âhttp://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.38767&lon=-1.65321&zoom=16&layers=0B0FTFTâ which Iâd like to save as a pretty JPEG.
Even thatâs not easy - as soon as I click on âexportâ, my screen geometry changes and I have to dicker about until I can get everything in before I manually crop the image to get back to where I was. Anyway, after all that I have a picture. Now to get the contributors.
Hmmmm. How do I end up with an .osm file? Ah, export as XML doesnât do what I assumed (create a .xml file), it creates a .osm. Next problem - Now Iâve got to work out what URL to call to get that file down onto the Linux box (no GUI!)âŚ
Hmmm. Hereâs where the fun starts. So, I need a way of going from the page URL (for example, âhttp://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.38767&lon=-1.65321&zoom=16&layers=0B0FTFâ) to the URL called when the form is submitted (taking into account the change of screen geometry).
OK. I give up, I donât think I can do that in five minutes. So, I now have the .osm file on the Windows box and Iâll SFTP it to the Linux box for processingâŚ
And so⌠The end result is:
âRichardâ:6
âblackadderâ:87
âsouthglosâ:4
âmorwenâ:1
"Thomas:1
âDamocovâ:130
âulflâ:1
"Nick:566
Which is wrong. âThomasâ should be âThomas Maternâ and âNickâ should be âNick Barnesâ. OK, OK, I know Iâm being picky and if I knew Perl Iâd hack the code to allow for spaces. However, whether it says âNickâ or âNick Barnesâ, that information still isnât useful in any way, shape or form. Consider a third party looking at the list of names. âHmmmm.â, they think, âI wonder who âblackadderâ is and which part they didâ. They still have to come back to the site to find out. This has achieved absolutely nothing more than simply attributing the map to the site would have done in the first place.
Anyway, I ramble. My point is, it is not realistic to expect anybody who wants to use images to be able to do this and Iâm also not sure that the usernames are adequate attribution even if it were.
The example above is for a small village and yet has 8 contributors. What about a map of, say, London? Am I expected to list the several hundred contributors? If anybody says âyesâ at this point, we may as well all pack up and go home as no bu88er will ever use OSM maps.
Letâs say I want a map of Birmingham on a T-Shirt Iâm going to sell. Do you really want me to list all the contributors? Even looking at the âpressâ section of the wiki and reading the legal licence stuff, itâs not clear that newspapers, magazines et al have to print a complete list. I canât imagine a journalist would be willing to spend the time collating such a list either.
Attribution by anything other than a single blanket âby OSM contributorsâ is simply ridiculous. To expect otherwise is ludicrous in the extreme and I suspect that if a licence contravention case ever came to court, OSM would be laughed out of the building. Enforcing the licence in those terms would have the effect of scuttling the ship weâre all sailing in.
Nick.