OK. What I should have said was āThe fact that it is not possible to easily retrieve a complete list of contributorsā.
By way of example, I have the URL āhttp://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.38767&lon=-1.65321&zoom=16&layers=0B0FTFTā which Iād like to save as a pretty JPEG.
Even thatās not easy - as soon as I click on āexportā, 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 doesnāt do what I assumed (create a .xml file), it creates a .osm. Next problem - Now Iāve got to work out what URL to call to get that file down onto the Linux box (no GUI!)ā¦
Hmmm. Hereās where the fun starts. So, I need a way of going from the page URL (for example, āhttp://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.38767&lon=-1.65321&zoom=16&layers=0B0FTFā) to the URL called when the form is submitted (taking into account the change of screen geometry).
OK. I give up, I donāt think I can do that in five minutes. So, I now have the .osm file on the Windows box and Iāll SFTP it to the Linux box for processingā¦
And soā¦ The end result is:
āRichardā:6
āblackadderā:87
āsouthglosā:4
āmorwenā:1
"Thomas:1
āDamocovā:130
āulflā:1
"Nick:566
Which is wrong. āThomasā should be āThomas Maternā and āNickā should be āNick Barnesā. OK, OK, I know Iām being picky and if I knew Perl Iād hack the code to allow for spaces. However, whether it says āNickā or āNick Barnesā, that information still isnāt useful in any way, shape or form. Consider a third party looking at the list of names. āHmmmm.ā, they think, āI wonder who āblackadderā is and which part they didā. 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 Iām 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 āyesā at this point, we may as well all pack up and go home as no bu88er will ever use OSM maps.
Letās say I want a map of Birmingham on a T-Shirt Iām going to sell. Do you really want me to list all the contributors? Even looking at the āpressā section of the wiki and reading the legal licence stuff, itās not clear that newspapers, magazines et al have to print a complete list. I canāt imagine a journalist would be willing to spend the time collating such a list either.
Attribution by anything other than a single blanket āby OSM contributorsā 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 weāre all sailing in.
Nick.