“Microsoft is pleased to announce the royalty-free use of the Bing Maps Imagery Editor API, allowing the Open Street Map community to use Bing Maps imagery via the API as a backdrop to your OSM map editors.
Bing Maps imagery must be used in accordance with the API Terms and Conditions [see PDF below] – although this is not legal binding advice, and you are encouraged to read the TOU itself, in sum the TOU says: you are only granted rights to use the aerial imagery, you must use the imagery as presented in the API, you cannot modify or edit the imagery, including the copyright and credit notices; you cannot create permanent, offline copies of the imagery, all of your updates to OSM arising out of the application must be shared with OSM, and the OSM map editor must be free to end users.”
If you have a question, I’m at steve@asklater.com or you can chat to people live at http://irc.openstreetmap.org/ Richard Fairhurst and others have already been working on the code to use this stuff with potlatch etc. You should see it go live soon!
Yay! Woohoo! ’nuff said!
Some documentation is accumulating on the wiki here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing
Who will profit: OSM, Microsoft or both?
You may not .. create a database of the content.
"You may not .. create a database of the content." Where Content means aerial imagery. See section 5 where Microsoft make no claims on "your content."
Will a WMS Server be available? If yes, when?
Too good to be true? Time will tell…#bing and #osm sittin’ in a tree..
Well, when can we expect OSM to change its name to MS CSM? (or just bing) In my eyes OSM just sold its soul to the devil.
@spacecube: I’ll play along with this for now, but… same feeling here. 🙁
@Max and @spacecube: Please have a look at the license offered by Bing and mention anything that you think is problematic. For fun, try swapping "Microsoft" or "Bing" for "Aerial Imagery Provider" and see if that changes your opinion. Should it?
What source tag should we be using? source=bing?
I see no requirement in the Bing license for a source tag, OSM best practices suggest that you include a source tag for the information of future mappers. source=bing seems a good choice.
Thanks Microsoft!
Blaise Aguera Y Arcas, Microsoft Bing architect, explains that the Bing aerial imagery donation is a one-way valve to freedom. http://styleisviolence.com/openstreetmap/
Just to clarify, I am free to use the aerial images in my own application as long as the data which is related to that use ends up in OSM? I can’t just release my data under a compatible license such as CC-BY-SA?
Hi, Thanks to Microsoft for their map; however, Saudi imagery is at least 10 years old !!.Cheers,Abdul
Maps don’t seem to be updated for Turkey either. had a project that needed to use this but seems like I will have to go somewhere else.
well, i don’t feel comfortable tracing Bing aerials at all – i hope MapQuest or other choices will improve their quality as soon as possible to allow me bringing back to tile tracing at OpenStreetMap
Why there is no tool in JOSM that permit the use of georeferenced external images (GeoTIFF, JPEG etc;) as backgrounds? The PicLayer tool is not able to open georeferenced images.
nice
Is it possible to download the satellite imagery as JPEG file format?