Forum: Announcements

Hi,

Users of the OpenStreetMap-based Vector Maps in TMJ-Mobile might be aware of the impending changes to the OSM data licensing to switch from a CC-BY-SA to an ODbL license model at the end of this month.

The re-licensing process, which has been under discussion for several years, will unfortunately mean that significant amounts of map data that was contributed by OSM users who have not agreed to the license change will need to be deleted from the database in order to satisfy the conditions of the new license.

Since this will directly affect the Vector Maps displayed in TMJ (along with the raster maps, but I have no control over these), I have decided to hold back from switching to the ODbL data on the TMJ tileserver and so will halt the daily updates from 30th March, thereby preserving the existing dataset before the mass deletions occur. This will therefore mean that further edits to the map data will not be reflected in TMJ, so unfortunately its usefulness as a tool for OpenStreetMap mapping will be reduced.

I will be reviewing this over the coming weeks/months, once the fallout from the license change has subsided, and hope to switch back the live data as soon as is practical. In the meantime, for those living in areas that are heavily affected by the license change I would strongly encourage you to sign-up to OSM and participate in the re-mapping efforts!!

Cheers,
Stephen

Hi Jose,

No, it would be far too complex to merge changesets from both sources, not to mention any negative effect that it might have on OpenStreetMap to (temporarily) support a 'rival' project...

Cheers,
Stephen

I guess it depends how evenly the missing 1% is distributed across the whole dataset - some areas might have very little changes whereas others are going to be massively affected (eg check out the estimated deletions that will occur in Sydney).

The redaction has now completed in the UK, and around here in Surrey there is probably a lot less than 1% removed, but even this will still need a fair bit of remapping/checking to get it back to how it used to be...

Cheers,
Stephen

Hi,

It has been 6 months since the start of the OSM data redaction period began, but last month OSM published the first full 'planet file' to be licensed under the new ODbL terms. I am happy to announce that the import of this data to the TMJ vector tileserver is now complete so the vector maps within TMJ will once again show the latest OSM map data (subject to caching and the usual 24 hour rendering delay).

Therefore you may want to clear the TMJ Map Cache of old tiles to force re-downloading of the latest ones. If using the built-in cache then use Menu/Clear/Map Cache, or if using a memory card cache then delete the cache files manually (easiest to do by connecting the phone to a PC via USB and deleting from there - this can take some time if the cache has grown large).

There may still be the odd older tile cached on the webserver, but these should be updated automatically within the next week or so. Also, please note that the tileserver is currently under higher load so tile rendering may be a little slower than normal, this should settle down in time...

Thanks,
Stephen