Open Maps?

Chilltowner asks: "I'm trying to get local (US) maps together for a community project. I want to able to modify and annotate the maps and provide them free to the public, creating a derivative open work. They also need to be accurate down to the street level and no more than 10 years out of date. I've been searching around for maps available in the public domain or under open licenses, like the Creative Commons licenses allowing derivative works. I've looked at the National Atlas, but the maps, though interesting, aren't detailed enough with street information. The topographical and aerial image maps available through that site are from Terraserver, which are copyrighted to Microsoft. Plus, I really just need simple vector road maps, not USGS rasters. I tried looking at the Census Bureau's TIGER line data, but I can't make heads or tails of it. Are there maps available through other agencies (national or international)? Are there Free/Open-Source Software projects that are making use of public data to build street-level maps for free (as in speech) use?"

Re:Maporama

[ColdWetDog]

I don't know about this - according to MapORama, my house in located in the middle of a giant body of water. It rains a lot around here, but not that much...

Re:Maporama

[Anonymous Coward]

according to MapORama, my house in located in the middle of a giant body of water.

Wait until the weekend is over; you'll be praising their accuracy. ;-)

Re:Freegis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tiger data (If you read the infosets long enough you can begin to undersdtand them)

Oh, no you don't. The last time I fell for that line, those "Magic Eye" scams almost drove me blind!

Re:Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Local "MLK drive" was called something different 30 years ago.

Typically, the "wrong side of the tracks".

Userbase

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since you're talking about people who will synchronize their portable GPS software with an open-source mapping project, I think you might get a biased sample of the city.

Lots of trips to the electronics store, comparatively few to buy condoms, or whatever.

Re:Freegis?

[ruckc]

Hey it took me 3 months of reading randomly through the tigerline descriptions to understand it.

I still can't understand it well enough to do anything with it unless someone pays me to (Understanding = TIME * MONEY)

Re:Freegis?

[roman_mir]

After a while you don't see the infosets anymore, all you see is blond, brunet, redhead...

Re:*scratches head*

[aminorex]

umm... if they were older than dirt, what would they
be maps *of*?

Re:PostGIS

[SEWilco]

Oops. Forgot the link: "I Am My Own Grandpa" [mamarocks.com]