hi legals, i've come across a couple of interesting questions / use-cases for the ODbL and wider discussion. it basically reduces to whether we want the ODbL to have viral (GPL-like) behaviour, or whether it should be less viral (LGPL-like). we've discussed this at an LWG meeting and the general feeling was that the LGPL-like behaviour would be more desirable, as it would allow wider use of OSM by third parties. however, it was felt that a wider discussion is necessary.
first case: a site wishes to use OSM data as a basis for non-geographic data. the example used is a review side, like beerintheevening.com or tripadvisor.com. they might want to use OSM as the source of geographic data by linking its reviews to OSM node IDs (or lat/lons taken from the OSM data). under a GPL-like interpretation of the ODbL, this would "taint" the database, requiring its release. considering that the records in the database may contain private information (IP/email address of the reviewer) this may mean that the site decides not to use OSM, because releasing the DB would violate their own privacy policy. second case: OSM data is downloaded to a handheld device (e.g: iphone). this is likely (given the screen size of the device) to be an insubstantial amount. the data is locally used for reference when entering other information (e.g: abovesaid reviews). the reviews are uploaded to a non-OSM site, linked to the OSM-derived node ID or lat/lon. if many people do this, does that constitute repeated extraction and therefore require release of the non-OSM DB under the ODbL? i.e: can 3rd party sites use OSM IDs or lat/lons from OSM as keys into their database? the discussion at the LWG meeting centered around whether the database "linking to" OSM data could be considered stand-alone. using the similarity with the LGPL; whether the reviews database could be "re-linked" against another source of geographic data while continuing to work. this would imply that the list of (e.g: pubs or hotels) would need to be released as an extract of OSM as a list of OSM IDs or lat/lons, but that the reviews themselves and auxillary tables (such as the users' information) wouldn't constitute a derivative work of the OSM database. what are your thoughts? cheers, matt _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk