I'm not that suicidal. :) Seriously, we're doing ok for reports at the moment, but if we need some more than that'd be a good idea.

Er, the OSP analysis is based on the fact that Wikimedia actually tells you to derive from Google Maps. That's pretty unambiguous.

Harry and Dave are right. If you want to prove what you think is legal about copyright, then fine. But do it somewhere else, not with OSM. OSM's policy is, and always has been, that we don't take the risk. It's unfair, to put it mildly, to put others' work at risk just because you're personally convinced of something.

On the specifics:

The argument that "facts CANNOT be copyrighted" is a wild over-simplification and if I hear one more North American recite it parrot-fashion I will not be responsible for my actions. In some jurisdictions, collections of facts can be, and are. That's what the EU database right is. Yes, it's a shit situation. We don't make the law but we have to live within it.

For Google Street View, my personal view is that it could be legal in some jurisdictions to take street names from it – but with two big provisos. The first is that Google's Ts&Cs don't prevent you (i.e. breach of contract), and they probably do. The second is that you certainly wouldn't be allowed to use it in conjunction with geocoded information; if you recognise the street from the photos, perhaps you could then take the street name, but not if you were using the geodata to identify which street it was that had this name. Even then, even despite both of those, I'm not entirely convinced any of this would be legal in a sweat-of-the-brow jurisdiction like the UK.

What sort of thing would you like Potlatch to do better?

The sort of mapping I do doesn't generally involve lots of tags - quite the opposite! - so I'm interested to find out how Potlatch could better help those who need them.

There's currently a bug in Potlatch which means it won't delete a way which contains the same node twice (e.g. a circular way). It'll be fixed in the next day or two, but before then, just remove the second occurrence of the node (select the node and press '-') and save it, then try to delete the way again.

Paul Johnson - aggrieved JOSM users on IRC say otherwise ;)

I believe there was a court case in Singapore fairly recently where this technique (though wrt maps, not imagery) was judged a copyright infringement.

"Please email richard bla bla... What the hack does that mean?!?"

It means what it says. Please e-mail me so I can have a look at identifiying and, if necessary, fixing the problem.

Well, the good news is that I've worked out how to call JS from AS in WinIE - I think...!

Well, the issue is that Potlatch (AS) needs to tell the browser (JS) whether (a) there are any unsaved changes and (b) whether a comment has been left. Every time it updates the status, there's a click - which gets really, really annoying when it happens at the start and end of every edit (as (a) implies). (b) could in theory be done on its own but I'd like to solve both at once as they're essentially the same issue.

A small note would require rejigging the screen display which takes it beyond the realms of "small", but I am thinking about it. :) Right now the priority is on fixing the remaining bugs in the API 0.6 support rather than nice-to-haves like this though, I'm afraid.

If someone can tell me (and has actually tried it and verified it works, not just Googled it) how to call JavaScript from ActionScript 1 _without_ Internet Explorer making a clicking noise, then I can make Potlatch prompt you for a comment on exit. But I can't really do it without figuring that out, and I don't have IE to test - or at least not a version that will click!

A little change for 0.6 in the database threw Potlatch. A fix has now been committed and should be live later this evening, hopefully. Sorry for the hassle.

What model is your GPS? Lots of mappers only use yellow Garmin eTrexes or similar.

The padlock is just by the way id - at the bottom left.

There's a million and one things I could say to that, but I'll just restrict myself to the one: Potlatch works with Gnash.

Brilliant stuff - all looks really good and precise. Will have to wean you off highway=path though. :)

We went out for a walk today and ticked off a couple of missing paths in the Leafield/Ramsden/Finstock area. I'm starting to think that West Oxfordshire might become footpath-complete before too long...

Heh - we drove through there yesterday on the way from Witney to Burford... funny to think there was probably someone mapping at the time.

Jon has been doing some work on more regular Mapnik updates.

The "Cambridge" one is interesting - Google appear to have a rogue batch of UK cities in the database. I've noticed it if you search Google Maps for Gloucester and Cirencester, too.

Do you have any 'saved' tracks on the Garmin?

They don't have timestamps. Saving tracks on a Garmin is very much to be avoided.

If only!

There's a divide in OSM between those who think that the wiki defines the tags to be used; and those who think that usage defines, and the wiki should chiefly document. I'm firmly in the latter camp (and, for what it's worth, so are most of "Those In Charge" - insofar as OSM has any such people!).

However, the former camp has some very keen wiki-gnomes who've hatched their own intricate voting system, procedures for "approving" and "deprecating", and so on. One brave soul recently tried to amend one of their more ridiculous schemes (a "smoothness" tag which could have the value "very_horrible" - I'm not kidding) and an entire wiki flamewar erupted.

Really we could do with a concerted attempt to sort all this out; but until then, as a humble editor author all I can do is pay some attention to the presets in Potlatch and try not to impose any daft tags, or relegate any sensible ones.

To say "abutters is deprecated" is another example of the wiki-gnomes acting in defiance of reality. There are over 40,000 abutters tags in Europe alone. I'm not planning to remove it from the Potlatch autocomplete any time soon.

That said, the abutters tag is meant to describe what abuts the road, and a street market is held on the road itself. So I doubt this is the right tag here.