License change still ongoing | OpenStreetMap Blog

Three weeks ago we mentioned we were still perfecting the ‘redaction bot’. The piece of code that goes through and redacts (removes/hides) any data that isn’t compatible with the new licence. Much to our dislike, it will take more time to get the bot working perfectly. Good news: the bot is now passing more tests than ever; bad news: still not all. Several people are working on this to make it work error-free.

Once these system tests are passing, live data testing will be conducted against a test server that is already configured and waiting. Subject to a successful test, a test of an isolated portion of the live database will be processed, most likely for the island of Ireland. If this goes successfully, the rest of the data will be processed.

On a positive note: in the last few weeks we’ve also managed to get agreement on several contributions to keep them in our database. We would like to thank all people who helped us make that happen.

We’ll give you another update next week.

Thank you all for your patience.

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7 thoughts on “License change still ongoing”

Chris April 26, 2012 at 20:36

It’s taken us five years to get this far. I think we can wait another couple of weeks to get it done properly.

Frank April 27, 2012 at 09:14

Thank you for this info. You are not 100% correct here because your last post was three and not two weeks ago, if I can count well :-).

Nevertheless, there is still big lack of information. Here are the questions which I would need answers as soon as possible – preferably before the migration process has started at all:

What exactly will happen as soon as you will be finished with license change? Especially, how exactly will look final data organization?
What will be the structure of new updates?
What will happen with old updates?
How will the exact relationship between the old data and updates and new planet database look like?
Will published updates transfer smoothly from old database to the new one or one needs to download the whole newly licensed planet database as soon as it will be published?

Could you, please, make these principal questions clear, or, if I miss something, point me to the right place to get answers?

HarryWood April 28, 2012 at 02:52

Hi Frank. I’ve corrected it to say “Three weeks ago”.

I think the answer to some of your questions, is that the planet and diff mechanisms will return to normal operation, exactly as they were before. We will try to blog with some more details about this, but the right place to get answers would be the rebuild mailing list (the comments here are not the ideal channel for such discussions)