"One Map, Many Voices."
      By: Chase Stephens.
      >> Good morning, everyone.  Please welcome Chase Stephens.
      [Applause]
      >> Hello.
      So hello, everyone, my name is Chase Stephens, and I'm an organizer for the OpenStreetMap Seattle meet up group.  I'm really glad to be here, and I'm glad that all of you are here.  I'm hoping that you're having a great time in Seattle.
      So the thing of our conference here is building community and what that means to me is that we have a lot of people in our project, and we're always looking for more.  And what we need is their mapping contributions and their technical contributions and their talents and their diversity and their values and goals.  But when you get to a certain number, eventually you're going to -- some of those goals and values are going to conflict, and then you're going to reach some disagreement.  And I'm going to be talking about one of those topics and disagreements today and hopefully at the end of the day we can find a way to stick together and do what's right for the project in the long-term.
      So this is sort of like an intro talk, hopefully a good probably for people who are new and also maybe a refresher for people who have been around the project for a while.
      So first question I'm going to say is why are we here?  And the answer to that is -- and what are we doing, it says.  And it says the answer to that right on the front package of our banner here.  It says that we're creating the map of the world.  It's being created by people like you.  And I'm going to rephrase that a little bit to two categories.  So we're mapping the world together, and, by the way, we have a philosophy behind how we're doing that, it drives what we do.
      So what I'm going to do is talk about both of those points and come up with a call to action and conclusion.
      So first point.  Mapping the world.  Great thing about this.  I don't have to really talk about this topic because I've had other people at this conference give really good talks on this, so they've covered it.  Drishtie Gave a video of a mapathon.  If you don't know what it is, it's a sewing circle with browsers and you have laptops and get-togethers friends and trace imagery halfway around the world, and it's a great way to contribute, and I really recommend that you go view her talk when it becomes available in the next couple of days.  And then just an hour ago but Andrew Wiseman gave a great talk on field map, going out and collecting data firsthand with a group of friends in your neighborhood and that's a great way to contribute to the project and something that OSM Seattle does all the time.  I recommend that you go -- he's right there.  And I recommend that you go and watch his talk, this talk is lazy, just direct people to other talks.  And my call to action, one of my favorite topics here, which is basically mapping what you know.  And I know that we're Web developers and programmers, and we're decision makers, and we want to use our talents that way.  But I would really encourage us not to overlook the power of the individual contribution because it's really important.  And the concrete steps you can take to do that is like for one thing number one, install an editor on your smartphone.  It's, like, I'm asking that you wait, like, 15 minutes to do this until after the talk.  But, for instance, app for iOS and a great guy in Seattle and everyone loves the app, so I would recommend everyone install that but I use it myself on my Android device.  They didn't have a tool and domain experts in at least two areas, the things we pass every day and the things that are right in front of us.  So if you have this tool on your phone, then it's, like -- map what you see, what you care about, it's, like, if you see a business that's shutter or one that's having a grand opening, try to change the mind-set is that you think, oh, well, maybe I could put that in the map.  So it's, like, if you like libraries like I do, I counted about 40 of them, I couldn't get them all because they're super popular.  So I could use a little bit of help.  So that's -- I could guarantee that you will become a better contributor to OSM if you do this.
      So moving on to the next subject, which is the philosophy behind this.  I have a really great quote here, and I have a lot of, like, text-heavy slides here, and I'm going to kind of paraphrase, so I might go through a little faster.
      Basically so what Richard stallman, the free software guy says is that free software has created a lot of practical advantages and people are flocking to it.  But interest is growing faster than the awareness of the philosophy is based on, which leads to trouble.  In order to stand for free software, we need to spread the idea to users as they're coming into the community.  We're failing to do this, it's like the efforts to bring new users in is far stripping this, and we need to do both and keep the two efforts in balance.  So that's what I'm trying to do today.
      I'm going to start with a really brief history of OSM, I'm sure most of you have heard this already.  But Steve started OSM in 2004 in the UK.  And that is not a coincidence because apparently there's an entity in the UK called the ordinance survey and what they do, what their charter is together vast amounts of geo data there and build these beautiful maps and they've been doing this for two or three years.  I've read that it's more amazing than anything -- any other kind of map in the world.  The problem is that it's not free.  It's the very definition of proprietary.  You know, they have that data, and they can make their maps, but you don't have access to it.  You don't have the same access, and you can probably buy your way in if you have enough money, but most of us casual don't, so it's off limits to you.
      I built this handy little table here.  You can notice stuff on the right because it's all great.  But the stuff on the left is the proprietary stack.  It starts with the bottom with access to raw data and then the top of that access to tools and then the top is what kind of -- what can you do with the maps that you create?  And it's, like, I'll start with the bottom, basically if you look at that -- I don't know.  Most of the time you don't have access to the data, like, or like I just said, it costs a lot.  So you don't have access to the data.  The next up, it's like you get -- perhaps you're going through a vendor, and they'll give you a limited window into the tool or once again you can buy a license for, like, $1,500, which is really expensive for most of us.  And then when you get to the top, it's, like, you finally get a map, and what can you do with it?  Can you print that out and print out a T-shirt?  Can you sell that T-shirt?  Can you make art out of it?  And publish it in a book.  And if any of those questions are, no, then you're under a lot of heavy restrictions.
      If you go to OpenStreetMap -- if you sent a note to me, if you could get the data to someone be Williamson someone would send you a note that would be, hey, here's the URL, and you could download it and here's some tools to use fool around with it, and then on top of that, all those questions that I -- all those uses that I mentioned just before, the answer is all "yes." so it's really an amazing project.  And my point is -- I'll take a breath here.  Is that we're on the right track.  So OpenStreetMap as it is today gives you the power and permission to use the data in any way you want pretty much.  So not everyone agrees with me.  Since we switched to the ODBL in 2012, it was really painful, there have been calls to change a license or dump it.  And, you know, people have said public domain attribution only, and this isn't a surprise because, you know, we're always -- they're always conflictive; right?  But it's, like, my thesis today is this is seriously going to damage the product, so I'm encouraging not to do this.  To get some help here, add a few new voices to this, Richard stallman, the free software guy, Eric Raymond, the open source guy, and Christopher Kelty who writes on open talks.  And as I said earlier, we've been fighting this battle for 30 years.  So I'm going to go through them decade by decade.
      For instance, you have '80s, you have proprietary Unix, the operating system.  There's no such thing as Unix workers' compensation all of these versions came out and licenses are fuzzy, so they're all different versions and all slightly incompatible, and it's, like, instead of being able to standardize, they all want to become the standard.  So instead of expanding the market, they just competed with each other and did all of this fighting and eventually as Raymond says here, the prior to proprietariness fell apart because they're trying to differentiate the products and not maintain compatibility.  So I think it's safe to say that it kind of paved wait for proprietary single solution like Windows perhaps.  In the '90s, we had another new -- technology called the Web.  And we had two players in this category.  And that's Netscape and Microsoft.  Each of them were on the committee but in the back both companies were implementing all of these features and extensions and sabotaging each other on the server.  So it's, like, this desire to win the market in this competitive advantage stuff was really, like -- really a problem.  If you remember these tabs that tell you, like, which browser you need to run in order to -- in order to open a Web page, you sort of remember what I'm talking about.  So -- so, yeah.  Basically we all -- and Microsoft won this battle kind of.  But I think that we all kind of lost because the Web was broken for like half of us at any one time depending what browser we used.
      And then the last one is a battle that I read about last week.  It started in about 2003 where the Telecoms were interested in fragmenting the Internet itself for high speed computing lane for people that can afford it and a slow lane for everyone else.  And Kelty says that the important aspect of the Internet is there's only one of them and all the we've had so far is a single Internet and not fragment it into multiple networks.  Oh, and he goes on and says governments, corporations, and NGOs, free software practices that have kept it one to date.
      So I hope I've made it this point.  Fragmentation actually make it worse.  For instance, my understanding -- I'm not a lawyer, but public domain, and you have OpenStreetMap here, and then you -- once you run into a problem, if we license it, then assume you have a problem and then somebody forks the problem and then all of a sudden you have two and they close it off with the proprietary solution and they're spending time enhancing making it better while we're still feeding it and then soon it becomes so good that we're -- so we're back at the proprietary and nobody wants that.  Attribution only is actually not that much better because based on my understanding, you can make a derivative database and apply, so you have two.  And then you can apply proprietary license to that, and you're still doing the same thing except when OpenStreetMap applies, you have enable by OpenStreetMap, which is embarrassing.  So I don't want to do that either.  So Richard stallman chimes in here, and he says there are a lot of people who don't understand the ideals of freedom and love the work we've done and jump-start their own people.  And it's, like, we're making these programs and constantly is you have to compete with improved versions of our own programs and that's no fun.  I totally agree.  So what do we have?
      What's amazing is that we already have those other projects never did and that it's already unified.  And the ODBL is what currently guarantees that it's going to remain unified and how does it do that?  It basically ensured that everyone is complaining about that every time someone makes a group, it hasn't given back to everybody else and the second thing you can't change the license.  It has to stay ODBL, you can't apply the proprietary to it.
      So basically Linux is protected by the new public license, the GPL, it's very similar to ODBL and let's see.
      In 1999, Eric Raymond asked two very important questions about this.  He says, well, Linux fragment -- and this is exactly what I was talking about.  And what he says is that it's very unlikely to happen because the distributors are constrained to operate from a common base of source code.  Hopefully this sounds familiar by now and they can't maintain differentiation because they have to give it all back.  And since nobody understands this nobody think so to do that kill proprietary units instead they have to compete in ways that benefit to everybody.  Which sounds great to me.
      The other questions he asked is, well, one company dominate.  You have this great project, will someone come in and monopolize it?  What he said is community norms, effectually a license keeps them from doing this.  And the only thing they can do is sell support.  With people willing to pay for it.  So he concluding that it's probably not going to happen.  Now, I have one last stallman quote, and I recommend you don't try reading this because it's pretty dense.  I have replaced -- the next slide I replaced new with OSM for the reader and also operating system with map data.  So this is my adapted stallman quote.  It says OSM will remove map data from the realm of competition.  You will not be able to get an edge in this area but neither will your competitors be able to get an edge over you.  You will compete in other areas while benefiting mutually in this one.  If your business is selling data, you are not like OSM, but that's tough for you.  If your business is like something else, you will push into the expensive business of selling map data.
      So my call to action is kind of hard to come up with because I already have what I want, it's just a matter of not messing it up.  So it's, like, the suggestions that I have, I came up with a couple.  First one is when these suggestions were made, you have to, like, do your own investigation and find out who's going to benefit from these changes and if the answer is not everyone, you have to check with the proposal.
      Second it's, like, we're led by volunteer elected boards and they don't have control over OSM, but they do have a lot of, like, visibility and -- well, visibility and influence on where we go.  And societies, like, you have to join the OSMF and you have to ask what these people believe in and if they don't align with your principles, it's time to find someone else.  And I think a lot of them would say the same thing.
      So, you know, I'm just here to try to keep the data accessible for the innovators of today and five years from today, which is really, like, you know, really a long time in technology terms.  I just -- I think of OSM as this -- as the goose that layed the golden egg, and trying to keep the golden eggs rolling in.
      So finally my conclusion in his history book that came out a couple of years ago, Simon Garfield wrote on the second-to-the-last page and he said OpenStreetMap is a good little map and perhaps as close to a democratic map as we're going to get.  So I'm going to take that are literally.  If what he says is true, then perhaps we should consider our current license to be our constitution, and we should protect it or ODBL so that it can protect our data.  Thank you very much.
      [Applause]
      >> Are there any questions for Chase?  No questions?
      >> I like this.  This is all really broadcast.
      >> So I 100% agree, awesome.  So do we need a carve out public domain for government datasets that can go into OSM?
      >> It's, like, that's -- it is a really difficult problem.  I realize I went through, and I've watched, like, videos of the calls to change a license.  And I think what you're asking is, like, you know, something to -- do we need some way to do transfers back and forth?  Because the government, like -- releasing things of public domain, we can import that stuff, but then we can't -- they can't come back out.  And it's a problem, and I don't really know what the answer to it is.  But my main concern is keeping the data free.  And also it's join our community is a decision, and I think it's easier for -- as hard as it would be, it's easier to change that policy than it would be to save our project if it gets fragmented.
      >> I kind of have a two-part question.  So yesterday, like, in the morning there's a presentation about, like, law clinics in the OpenStreetMap community.
      >> Yeah.
      >> One of the things that was brought up that I think is interesting is that when legal teams start determining whether or not to use OSM, the general broad general clause makes it difficult for them to know, like, when they trigger that provision and oftentimes prevent them from getting involved in the community, and I wonder if you have any thoughts on that in particular, and I'll say my follow-up.
      >> Yeah.  That's a good question.  One of the main concerns that people have is when does the clause kick in?  And there's been a lot of really good work recently on the legal guidelines, mainly can you use a patch work of vendors and then horizontal layers approach so that if you make a good-faith effort to take out, you just use it as a base map and remove all the features that kind of collides with your stuff.  Then it's clean.
      So there's those two that have already been approved and then the next one that's up which is geocoding, which she talked about.  So it's, like, I'm really interesting in seeing what they come out with there.  That's basically all I can say about it.
      >> And certainly follow-up to that is, you know, I like the other sort of licensing and, like, historically I think that context is important and maybe it's my lack of familiarity with the struggles in general, but my open end question is pragmatically what sort of, like -- regardless of licensing agreements may exist, what is the authority that may enforce and is it, you know -- how much power does the community really have effectively to stop someone right now from just forking off the entire project and doing what they want with it?  We may have a licensing agreement but if someone blatantly disregards it, is there anything we can really do?  Do we sue these people?
      >> Yeah.  Another really good question.
      And I think my take on it is that -- let me see.
      Well, I'm not sure that it's been tested, you know?  And it's -- so I think the answer's unclear.  And whether it would be enforceable in other countries, I'm not sure about that either.  But I think the main point is to keep it free -- I can't say in just America.  But, like, having these large companies make this big thing and then I think if that happened, then there would be a lawsuit.  And I think it would probably be target be a corporation that's using it for a large commercial use.  That would be my guess.
      >> Okay.  Please provide Chase with a warm thank you.
      [Applause]