Credit where credit’s due

One of the questions I am often asked is “Great Leader, how should I attribute OpenStreetMap on my iPhone app?”

My answer is of course that Cloudmade will be more than willing to take care of all your attribution worries for a modest monthly subscription to our tile service.

Unfortunately some guys at failing Web 1.0 properties are not smart enough to avail themselves of our service. So just for you guys, because I’m not Evil, I’m going to explain OSM attribution for you free gratis and for nothing.

The crucial point to remember is that our license requires you to credit everyone. Yes, every single contributor who has made a Substantial contribution to OSM.

Now the copyright bores on legal-talk will drone for England (Oxford usually) on what Substantial means. But it is actually really simple.

If you just move one street, or add a roundabout, or map a whole city which unfortunately happens to be in Germany, that clearly isn’t Substantial.

However if for example you establish a world-changing open mapping project, secure €2.6m in VC from genuinely nice guys, and spread the OSM gospel to the four corners of the world via a punishing flight schedule that would make even Ol' Ed blanch, then that is a Substantial contribution and you deserve credit, as well as a free holiday somewhere hot and a lifetime’s supply of designer eyewear.

Happily OSM only has a small number of such contributors, well one in fact, which makes attribution much easier. Let me give you some free examples.

A good example is the OSM signup email, the first thing any new mapper sees. This gets right to the point by mentioning the Substantial Contributor in 11 different languages. Turns out I’m the fundator, the grondlegger and in Germany, the Gründer. I may have to get Nick to check that last one out. I think the Germans might be taking the piss.

An example of how not to do it is ‘OpenStreetMap: die freie Weltkarte nutzenkatzenjammerhermanngoering’, a book by some Germans. This only mentions the Substantial Contributor in Appendix VII, on page 164, which is patently not “reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing”. And even then it calls me an Erfinder. The bastards.

So now you know who to attribute, you just need to know how. Just copy and paste this handy logo into your iPhone app.

Your choice, baby

So some snotty-nosed punk from some unsuccessful geodata startup sneers at our data:

CEO Noam Bardin is wary of the OSMs licensing and would rather start from scratch.

Unfortunately CEO Noam Bardin is also about to have his ass kicked halfway to Palestine and back. Good luck on "doing our best to incorporate your feedback into the upcoming release", apparently there's still some Netscape engineers in a room somewhere in Mountain View who've been doing the same since 1997.

Our sales line is open 24 hours, Noam.

Rails Disambiguation Guide For OSM Developers

So apparently the server weekend had some hiccups because the admin guys kept installing the wrong type of rails. Tsch, these devs, hey?

Even though it’s three years since I did any development I can still teach you whippersnappers a thing or two. Let me make it clear.

1. Rails (Servers)
Installation instructions are either missing or bear no relation to reality. Obscure configuration (weird lever, black catch). Regularly jam. Server works much better without them. Much less annoying solutions exist.

2. Rails (Ruby)
Installation instructions are either missing or bear no relation to reality. Obscure configuration (gems, environments). Regularly jams. Server works much better without it. Much less annoying solutions exist.

You see, no confusion at all. HTH.

Harry saves CloudMade

So you might have heard the news that we had to lay off our community ambassadors (you know, the guys we employ, not the ones in Kiev who actually pay for the privilege of working for me).

So I'm really sad about this. As you know, I'm all heart. But some of my 26 fellow CM executives are less cuddly and did the math on how many contributions our ambassadors were bringing in.

    300 new school mappers (thanks Sarah)
+ 250 OSMers energized by lol-tastic SOTM speech (thanks Dirk)
+ 1 super-productive super-happy SteveC (thanks Hurricane)
 - 58 bulk imports that would have been done by crschmidt (thanks Russ)

    Divide into 6,370,031km of highways
= US mapped in 238,764 years

So when I explained to the board that our US streetmap would now ship in AD 240772 rather than the previously promised 2010, they got a bit antsy.

Fortunately Harry - you know, the tall blonde guy from some place beginning with N, who isn't Andy - is going to save CloudMade. He's getting the community to go after those guys who leech OSM's tiles (like, the whole iPhone App Store) and hammer them for license infringement. So when Harry says:

There's a bunch of paid-for iPhone apps springing up which use our maps and our tile servers, and don't credit OpenStreetMap at all. Break out the red text for those kinds of things.

"Break out the red text" is kind of wikispeak for "get medieval on their ass". Think of it as crowd-sourced vigilanteism. And then our hardcore sales team moves in for the kill - every app that OSMers block from the tileserver is a new client for CloudMade. Epic win I think.

Occasionally Juha asks me why we don't just develop our own iPhone apps, so raking in the money while building our brand. I explain to him that the ecosystem is more important, and he nods sagely, deep in thought. It's a good job VC guys always take a long-term view.

Farewell community guys, we'll miss you. Much love. Namaste.

Meet & Greet

Having an awsome time at this year's SOTM, it's bigger brighter better faster than anything we had before! (Some wannabe national chapters claim they'll get 400 visitors for their first conference next year but that's rubbish of course.)

Speaking of Germany, I was taken aback by the EPIC FAIL that was the "State of Germany" talk yesterday - it completely failed to mention the most thrilling thing that happened to the Krautsourcing community in the last 12 months, which was clearly the meet & greet tour that me and my fian^Wemployee embarked on in May. The community just loved it, and basically requested that I post more on talk-de, which of course I did. One of my fan-crowd later sent me this picture and I really think it should have been in the presentation. Prepare for more of this in
the near future.




See you in the pub!

Twitter

@fakestevec

OSMF Chairman Sweepstake

So as my three-year term as chairman comes to an end, let me give you a run-down of the leading contenders to not succeed me in this important role. It’s important to know who the lucky guy will be with the accolade of coming second in the ballot and you can bet there’ll be no other topic of conversation at SOTM. Well you can bet if you like. You haven’t seen what I’m announcing in my keynote yet.

While we’re on the subject, let me point out that the recent dramatic increase in OSMF membership in the Ukraine is because those guys are so enthused about mapping. Ballot-rigging just isn't in their nature, they know of nothing but free and fair elections. Anyway.

The candidates

Peter Miller. Almost certainly formulating a Use Case for chairmanship of OSMF as we speak. Would change O in OSM from Open to Ontology. Leadership posters to be pasted on bus stops across Britain. 6 to 1.

RichardF. Would impose socialist five-year plan on OSM. Likely to duplicate most OSMF positions, not intentionally but due to a bug in Potlatch. Liable to go postal if elected to Licence Working Group. 20 to 1.

Mike Collinson. Probably also a socialist. Never trust anyone with the PD symbol on their wiki page. Especially not:

Frederik. Thinks he can rely on the support of the German masses to assure him of the position, fortunately no longer the case thanks to our recent hearts and minds mission (in short: appeal to the hormones of 17-year old Linux freaks by sending over CM HOT BABES). 5 to 1.

Iván Sánchez Ortega. Knows his way around NMAs, smart on copyright, good coder, really nice guy. Would make an excellent OSMF chairman. Therefore, far too sane to ever consider standing. 200 to 1.

Andy Blackadder. Showing dangerous signs of independence recently. Appears to be allied with the insurrectionist Sustrans faction in OSM - what is it with those guys? Memo to Nick: throw some more mapping party work his way. 10 to 1.

Nick?

Hello?

Shit.

Nick B. Why didn’t I see this one coming? Don’t the backroom brains behind the organisation always try to take over? What if our German expedition was secretly researching how best to organise a putsch? Shit.