Thanks Ricardo, so yes:
- we have a small number of data imports but most of our data comes from our users who add them manually. Ideally we don’t want to ‘license’ data from networks because there are far too many networks to deal with and some of them want to sell their data rather than give it away. Users adding the data themselves grant us the copyright to the information they have created, so we can redistribute the data freely.
- many people don’t use Open Charge Map and instead use apps that are popular in their region (PlugShare, ZapMap, Chargemap, Electromaps etc). All of these other apps & websites keep the data and do not share it freely with other apps/services. None of these other services contribute data back to OCM but some do use some of our data.
- Ultimately the quantity & quality of our data is driven by our users, if we don’t have users in your country then the data will be missing or inaccurate.
I am the only (volunteer) developer, other people help out sometimes with little things (and many other people help edit the data and keep it up to date, thanks to everyone for that! I generally don’t edit the data myself) but so far I’ve developed the API, Database, App, imports, services etc. I have basically given up trying to write more imports as they leave us in a questionable copyright position anyway.
I think if you want UVE to contribute to open charge map you need to advocate that with them, it won’t make much difference if I ask the same thing. The normal answer is ‘but everyone uses ‘x’ and why should I bother updating it two places’, of course the idea was that you’d only update Open Charge Map and other apps would just pull the data from there, but inevitably developers want to control their own data and if they get enough users it’s not a problem for them. If the data is good enough quality they can sometimes even it sell it to others (like PlugShare etc do).
We can accept bulk data from anyone as long as it is detailed enough and they are the original author of the data (i.e. they didn’t copy it from somewhere or download it). Ideally they would provide it to is in our own Json POI format (I can discuss this with contributors if they are interested in doing this), that way we don’t have to write something to convert the data.
I need to provide documentation on how people can give us bulk data but basically if people can give use the data like this then we can easily import it (ID numbers are mapped to our core reference data, things like networks, connection types etc: https://api.openchargemap.io/v3/referencedata):
[
{
"OperatorsReference": "EC-123",
"OperatorID": 1,
"UsageTypeID": 1,
"AddressInfo": {
"Title": "Eletroposto Graal 67",
"AddressLine1": "Rodovia Anhanguera",
"Town": "Região Imediata de Jundiaí",
"StateOrProvince": "Região Imediata de Jundiaí",
"Postcode": "13214-660",
"CountryID": 36,
"Latitude": -23.13005196046562,
"Longitude": -46.94990143478856
},
"Connections": [
{
"ConnectionTypeID": 1036,
"StatusTypeID": 50,
"LevelID": 3,
"Amps": 63,
"Voltage": 400,
"PowerKW": 43.0,
"CurrentTypeID": 20,
"Quantity": 1
},
{
"ConnectionTypeID": 33,
"StatusTypeID": 50,
"PowerKW": 50.0,
"CurrentTypeID": 30,
"Quantity": 1
},
{
"ConnectionTypeID": 2,
"StatusTypeID": 50,
"PowerKW": 50.0,
"CurrentTypeID": 30,
"Quantity": 1
}
],
"NumberOfPoints": 1,
"StatusTypeID": 50
}
]
When people are referring to other data sources for inspiration they must not reproduce any free text (i.e. sentences regarding access to charging etc).
).