hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0413.txt

Episode: 413
Title: HPR0413: Ontario Linux Fest Interview
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0413/hpr0413.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 20:00:05

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A
I'm at South East Linux Fest, and having a good time, it's kind of shutting down right
now, but one guy in particular came down from Canada from the Ontario Linux Fest and
open street maps, so it's a two for one.
First of all, what's your name?
Richard Wheat.
Okay, cool.
Richard, thanks.
First of all, thanks for talking to me.
So the open street map project is something I've heard of for a little while now.
I never understood, because I'm not a huge GPS geek, I guess, is what the entry barrier is.
What do I need to do this kind of activity?
The open street map is a pretty interesting project, because it applies the same freedoms that
we see in Wikipedia to geographic data.
So it's a complete set of tools to work with geographic data, but it's also a complete collection
of geographic data that is also free.
The barrier of entry depends a little bit on where you are, but the biggest barrier to entry
is your own interest.
If you're interested in improving the map near where you live or near where you work,
you can do it, and you can do it with this, as little as a pen and paper, and, of course,
an internet connection under computer.
Cool.
And how does it work, I guess?
To contribute to open street maps, what would be the different options for me?
Well, there are a couple of different options for contributing to open street map.
The basic model that many of our contributors around the world use is to collect data from your neighborhood
about the geography of your neighborhood, and then to mark that up in one of the open street map editors
and contribute it to open street map that way.
Those contributions can be information that you collect with a GPS device,
like the exact positioning of a cycleway or a hiking trail or a section of highway or an on ramp,
and you would take that by using your GPS to save information about where you were going,
then traveling that route, then taking that saved data file, and using that to mark up your travels in the editing software,
and then submitting that information to open street map.
And now, is GPS such that practically any GPS will be able to log its journey and upload it,
or is it all proprietary, and you have to have a certain model?
It's variable, and it does depend on the model that you're using.
You can find reviews for a lot of different GPS devices on wiki.openstreetmap.org
under the GPS reviews section.
So that will tell you if your pre-existing GPS will help you with collecting GPS tracks.
I've always been pretty careful about buying ones that I know I can use with open street maps,
so I've been pretty lucky with the ones I've got.
Cool. Yeah, it seems like something you wouldn't want to try to hack around.
So now, what under this point is open street map?
Do I really care if I don't own a map, as long as I get to the coffee shop where I want to go?
Some people don't care. Some people don't care about the freedom in their software either.
We see that in some communities they just don't care about free software in general.
Why would you expect them to care about free geodata if they don't care about free software?
But it's pretty incredible that a project like open street map does exist for people
who are concerned about the freedom of the data that they use,
and their freedom to use data in unexpected and creative ways.
You may have access to a commercial data set, but you might not have permission to use it
for some wonderful new innovative idea that you have,
whereas you wouldn't be restricted by those license terms for the data using open street map.
Which is pretty cool if you fancy yourself as an innovator or an inventor
and you want to do something involving a location.
Or if you don't, and in a pinch you realize you are an innovator and you need some geographic data
and you realize you don't have permission to tap into such and such.
Right, exactly.
I ran into one fellow at another conference that was doing an analysis of geographic networks.
And he was comparing what he was looking at was how emergency services are available
and how emergency services are distributed around a city.
And he used two different data sets for the same city to kind of analyze the quality of the networks
and see how it affected delivery of emergency services.
He could also have used the open street map data as a third data set for that analysis that he did.
If he hadn't had access to two different data sets, you might not have been able to do his analysis.
So you may just want to take an interest in open street map to see how it compares with
whatever other geographic data you're working on.
Cool.
All right, well that clarified actually a whole lot for me.
So thanks.
You're welcome.
One of the other big points of interest with open street map is it doesn't have to be data that's commercially viable.
So if a big fast food restaurant wants to get all of their restaurants onto somebody's commercial map,
chances are they can negotiate a contract and get all of their locations across the country,
put on the map, whereas mom and mom running a fast food joint in small town,
they're not going to be able to get their company on the map.
They can certainly put their company on an open street map and put their location on open street map.
That's pretty cool.
It's pretty cool.
It's like second life except in real life.
You can just, if you have something, you can add it to that.
If you've got a geographic itch that you need to scratch,
you can probably scratch it with open street map because it doesn't have to be commercially viable.
It has to be accurate and it has to be interesting in some way,
and it should be correct, but it doesn't have to be commercially viable.
Very cool.
There's other little thing you do in the air involved with.
Yes, Ontario Linux Fest.
We are here at Southeast Linux Fest, and the folks here were inspired by the folks
at Ohio Linux Fest as we were with a colleague of mine.
We traveled to Ohio Linux Fest for the last six years, and every year we tried to get
some of our other friends in and around Toronto to make the trip with us to Ohio,
and we had a tough time convincing them that they should make the trip down with us,
which I'm not sure if that's something about our friends or about our ability to talk them
into taking long car trips with us, but we got fed up with them not coming to the party
and we decided to bring the party to the party.
We're holding our third Ontario Linux Fest on Saturday, the 24th of October, 2009,
and we'd like to see many of your listeners coming.
If you want to check up what we've got lined up for speakers and find out what the schedule looks like,
both of those are not carved in stone yet.
You'll find them at onlinux.ca, that's o-n-l-i-n-u-x.ca.
Hopefully we'll see lots of you there.
Cool.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks so much for speaking to me, and I'll probably see you at either Ohio and or Ontario.
My pleasure.
I look forward to it.
Cool.
Thanks.
Thank you for listening to Haftler Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
She'll head on over to C-A-R-O dot A-C for all of her students.
Thank you.