freebeer (2020-01-12 09:30:45+00:00): mapman, there are many thousands of governments which are paid for by taxpayers but whose data is not made public domain, worldwide.  the us government is a notable exception, but one cannot extrapolate from that to regional and local governments.  texas is known to be particularly problematic despite collecting texas taxes.

the situation is far clearer outside of the us of a, in select areas where tax-collecting government agencies have made their data open to the public but under restrictive licences, and for example in germany there is a limited number of government sources that are free to source for osm, but a significant number which are not free, even to the point where legal action has been taken against osm for the use of their data, so that the german community (of which Georg here is a member) is very careful about checking the compatibility of sources used with osm and reverting additions from incompatible government sources.

the key point is not that osm is itself a non-profit non-commercial organisation, but that its primary product, the map database and data within, is open to all use, *including commercial usage*, that complies with its terms.  and many commercial services now make use of osm data in a for-profit setting, such as mapbox, maps.me, facebook, and i don't know what all.

it is for this reason that sources which limit end-usage to personal and non-commercial use are incompatible with osm, and may not be used as-is, and it is necessary to obtain a waiver or permission for the clauses that conflict (normally non-commercial limitations, or attribution requirements that osm cannot meet).

you may doubt that entity X, here fairfax county, will act against osm, but this is not grounds to copy their data, as it has happened in the past and continues to do so, if you were to monitor data working group redactions.

there is a difference between using non-compatible data to verify an item in osm, and copying from that source or making changes based on that source.  i take it that the street in question where i see a name now, previously had no name.  and i also take it that this name was sourced from the topic of this discussion, which would be a no-go, unless:

1)  the source terms are in fact compatible with osm - i have not looked and am not a legal expert about these matters but as i note, commercial use and attribution requirements need to be compatible as the most frequent bones of contention;

b)  you or someone contacts the organisation responsible for the data to obtain documented permission that osm may use that data, if 1) above is not the case.

if 1) turns out to be true, then b) is unnecessary, but if not, then to carry out b) with success would be of much greater value to osm (and i hope fits in with your threat as i read it to do something else with your time) as it would allow that source be not just used for this single addition, but to check/add data throughout the whole county, and possibly open up further data (building footprints?) for import into osm.

to respond to your claim that osm will get nowhere without relying on potentially incompatible data, i give the example of germany where the bulk of the data was added by mappers without imports, lacking TIGER equivalent.  it is not perfect, and it is a very different community and ideology than one seems to find in the us where the default is google and there is less a hands-on approach that i see, but the philosophy behind osm is not to be the most complete or correct map, but the best it can be with the allowed resources, and where it comes to a choice between complete but questionable data, osm has chosen to err on the side of caution, leaving a blank rather than to include legally risky sources.

where there is a shortage of mappers, as in the us, or ropey data has been imported, the proper channel to go through is to obtain and most importantly, document permission to use external data sources to enhance mapper input.

i'm writing too much for this apparently minor infraction, and had adamant's proposal for a comment character count limit been put into production, you'd have been spared thi