Geonames

GeoNames ( geonames.org ) is a geographical data base available and accessible without cost through various Web services. (From wikipedia 'Geonames' article)

Contents 1 Can we use geonames ? 2 Are we using geonames? 2.1 Search 2.2 Google summer of code project 3 See also

Can we use geonames ?

Although the site states that the data is released under a Creative Commons attribution license...

Not free enough! geonames.org data is probably a derived work of Google Maps and is therefore not suitable for import in OSM

see e.g. http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2007-May/014038.html

From a comment on the mailing list by Andy Robinson:

"See http://www.geonames.org/data-sources.html

Geonames aggregates data from other sources and you will see in the list even organisations like the Ordnance Survey listed. Thus it is not possible to say whether data is or is not subject to copyright. As a source geonames is best avoided. Better to go back to the original sources that they use and try and establish if the bit of data you are looking for is available freely or not."

Are we using geonames?

Search

We return search results from geonames. See Search#Geonames

Google summer of code project

There was a Google summer of code application idea. discussion. Mailing list posts (march/april 2008) : [1] [2] [3]

See also

GEOnet Names Server - A government database which we can use (with caveats) . There is a lot of overlap with the GeoNames dataset in fact (GeoNames was clearly based largely on GNS at least originally)