> From: Alex Barth [mailto:a...@mapbox.com] > Sent: Monday, October 22, 2012 4:25 PM > To: Licensing and other legal discussions. > Cc: talk...@openstreetmap.org > Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [Talk-us] press from SOTM US > > Fair point. Still - I would ask what is the purpose of this protection > and how does it benefit OSM on this particular level? OSM clearly > benefits of being used. The usage of OSM data in maps has been > clarified, I believe the ability to unencumberedly leverage OSM data to > create produced works is a huge benefit for OpenStreetMap as a whole as > it creates more versatile map styles, (and yes, abilities to monetize > them) and in turn have more map users and thousands of micro incentives > of improving our common map. Important similar incentives are routing or > geo coding. The latter is where I think the shoe starts to hurt. In my > mind there's much to be gained by giving better incentives to contribute > to OSM by clarifying the geocoding situation and little to be lost by > allowing narrow extracts of OSM. I believe we can do this within the > letter of the ODbL and within the spirit of why the ODbL was adopted.
Well, by using a share-alike license you are rejecting some uses, just like if you use LGPL with a library. The issue is that a library has clear interfaces and there is more extensive case law about what is protected by copyright whereas the case law and precedents are unclear for geodata. Where I see the license as trying to prohibit is mixing OSM + other data and then marketing it as "OSM, but better" without sharing the other data. You could be confident that commercial geodata providers would like to do this for the road network, where they may have poor coverage in areas that OSM has good coverage. When our address data gets good enough in areas where they have poor coverage, you can bet they'll look for any ways to do the same. > BTW, I don't want to know how many people out there have used Nominatim > for geocoding without having any idea... Well, for most of the world they're likely fine. I cannot imagine local courts holding any copyright protection to apply to the output of Nominatim and I expect they would see the contact provisions (if enforceable) to apply to the operator of the server, not to the person using it. Of course the same is likely to apply to anyone offering a geocoder based on data from a commercial data provider. The lesson for this? When seeking to enforce your rights on geodata that covers the world, pick the right country to do so in. _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
