On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Eugene Alvin Villar <sea...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Now whether one set of 20 nodes or a different set of 20 nodes better > represent the shape of a road is a matter of creative subjectivity. Neither > set is more mistaken nor more inaccurate than the other. > What set of nodes constitutes a "best fit" to a given shape with a given number of points, is fairly objective. You may "creatively" choose something other than the best solution, but again, I don't think that constitutes copyrightability. Not within context. (If you intentionally chose something other than the "best fit", for something sort of stylistic purpose, fine, but I really don't see how that's applicable to road mapping.) I think that's borderline at best. But I do agree with your greater point, that there probably is some sort of "thin copyright" to the OSM database. (Of course, that "thin copyright" is then further diluted among a couple hundred thousand contributors, making it very thin indeed.) > For practical purposes, we can't add an infinite number of nodes or should > even add 100 nodes to represent a perfectly circular roundabout, > We could, however, introduce a "arc" tag. And if I was better at making proposals (and/or the OSM processes were better at accepting proposals), it would probably already be introduced. To represent an arc, you only need three points (start, end, and any third point on the arc uniquely defines a triangle which is circumscribed by exactly one circle). This could even be made backward compatible. Just split the way at the beginning and end of the arc and put "arc=yes". Renderers that don't know about arcs would use three points (or four, or five, or whatever). Renderers that do know about them would use as many as is necessary for the resolution of the image. (In the case of an arc=yes tag with more than three points Of course, I can't copyright this idea... So you're free to use it if you'd like with or without attribution to me.
_______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
