Creative Commons Canada

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name>]

So, one incredible project under a CC license is the Open Street Map, an effort by people in the UK and elsewhere to provide world-wide maps for free:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

How does it work? Volunteers trace satellite photos for feature information (streets, parks, highways, etc.) and also upload data from their own GPS units. That is, they walk the streets of a city, and then update their GPS units' data files to a central server, which adds the data to the maps. The resulting maps are available under an Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

One great local project has been "mapping weekends" in various parts of the globe. For example, the "Mapchester" event to map Manchester last year:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Mapchester

Coverage of Canadian cities is good, but not perfect; I'm going to try to organize a mapping weekend for Montreal for  after the snow melts (April or May, say). Two questions about this:

• Would it make sense to run such an event under the CC Canada name? "Creative Commons Canada to help improve free maps of Montreal..."?
• Would it make sense to synchronize with other cities and towns across the country, and do it all in one weekend?

-Evan

Attachment: smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature