Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
Jeffrey Ollie wrote: > Ævar, thanks for taking point on this... These sort of licensing > issues are an annoying, but necessary part of our work and not > everyone has the stomach for it. I myself have run into the issue > locally... There's nearby county that has very high resolution aerial > images but the standard licensing terms that they offer them under > would make it impossible for me to use with OSM. That plus the fact > that they would charge me a lot of money for copies of the images has > made me decide not to even bother. > > Perhaps I'm assuming something that's not true, but there may be a national security kind of issue here too. I've seen very similar licenses on, for instance, neutronic simulation codes for nuclear reactors. The design of the license is to (i) sound very open, (ii) make it so that the "right people" can get the product easily, but (iii) the product can be denied to anyone that that the owners want to deny it to without having to give a honest reason. Of course, for all I know, North Korean tanks already have Tom Toms loaded with pirate versions of the latest commercial maps of S. Korea. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:47 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: > > NASA/METI have updated their distribution terms with a FAQ in response > to my questions: > > https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/lpdaac/about/news_archive/friday_july_24_2009 > > Unfortunately the new terms aren't new at all, and they still look too > restrictive to be incorporated into freely licensed datasets. Ævar, thanks for taking point on this... These sort of licensing issues are an annoying, but necessary part of our work and not everyone has the stomach for it. I myself have run into the issue locally... There's nearby county that has very high resolution aerial images but the standard licensing terms that they offer them under would make it impossible for me to use with OSM. That plus the fact that they would charge me a lot of money for copies of the images has made me decide not to even bother. Up next I'm going to see what I can get for the county that I'm an actual resident of. Perhaps I'll have better luck there. -- Jeff Ollie ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:15 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: > So, what we should do is to author a document (on the wiki?) which > clearly explains why such terms which restrict redistribution and > fields of endeavor mean that free content projects like OSM can't use > the data and will have to keep using SRTM. Since nobody (especially someone with legal know-how) has offered to do this I've continued to my correspondence with NASA/USGS/METI using my own know-how and miscellaneous bits I've scraped from the recent ASTER threads on this list for support. Below is an E-Mail I just sent to the NASA/USGS/METI people I'm corresponding with. I won't include the snippets I'm replying to since I haven't had permission to publish them, instead I'm going to replace them with little summaries of the original content. My summaries are one-liners while the originals are a few paragraphs so obviously information is lost in the process: > [What's this public OpenStreetMap forum you're referring to?] It's being discussed on the main OpenStreetMap "talk" mailing list (and some other foreign language lists, e.g. the German one). Here's a list to the thread I started there: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-July/thread.html#38235 It's a public mailing list so you could sign up if you'd like, or continue corresponding with me and I could ferry information back-and-forth. In any case I'll be submitting what I send to you to the aforementioned mailing list, but I won't quote any remarks from you (@nasa.gov/@usgs.gov people) unless I have explicit permission to do so. So I'll modify this E-Mail so that e.g. the paragraph I'm replying to now will be replaced by something like "[Where is this being discussed?]" before I post it. But that's bound to cause confusion so having permission to quote you when appropriate would be better. I was hoping that someone with more legal knowledge would be willing to chime in but that hasn't happened already. I'm just a mapping hobbyist but I'll try to explain what would be about acceptable terms for open source/free software projects the best I can. http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-July/038327.html > [Perhaps your intended use of the ASTER data is supported, e.g. if you > derived tiles intended for some mapping software that would not be considered > redistribution of the original product an could be pushed downstream] > [However if you were intending to distribute the canonical ASTER data as-is > that would be in violation of the terms] I think I've correctly read between the lines of the download agreement in assuming that the purpose of that clause is to avoid Balkanization of the ASTER data, i.e. to make sure that NASA/METI will always be the canonical source for the source dataset. If the terms were changed to something like: You are not allowed to publicly distribute the original ASTER data files but any derived work can be redistributed freely with (only) the following restriction: If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective Works, You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and give the original author (NASA/METI) credit reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing by conveying the name (or pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author. Or something like that then the ASTER dataset could be used to its full potential by free data projects like OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia & others. But since there would be no restriction on the fields of endeavor that generated data could always be used to generate a DEM again, see a further explanation in this E-Mail: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-July/038327.html For instance here's a map where the OpenStreetMap data which is under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) license has been combined with SRTM contours: http://osm.org/go/0CZyDpI--?layers=00B0FTF The CC-BY-SA license specifies (as do most free software licenses) that when you distribute derived works you can impose no further restrictions on the data. That's a pretty much a universal feature of popular free content licenses to avoid data Balkanization and ensure compatibility so that e.g. someone doesn't specify the additional terms that you can't use the derived work for some specific use (e.g. military), or that you can't use it on a Sunday. Such accumulated restrictions would quickly make the data unusable for everybody. Someone could take that map and generate a global DEM by analyzing the contour lines and distribute a global DEM derived from ASTER free of the original restrictions, thus circumventing the original limited use clause. But in reality nobody is going to go to all this trouble and nobody is going to be confused about NASA/METI being the original and canonical source of ASTER data. The best support for this claim is that today nobody is confused about NASA be
Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Jeffrey Ollie wrote: > On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Ian Dees wrote: >> >> NASA = a US federal government organization. All data originated by US >> federal organizations (and especially when funded by tax payer dollars) is >> in the public domain. I would imagine that the licensing terms they give are >> superseded by these rules. > > ASTER is a joint mission between NASA a few Japanese organizations. > As such, I don't think that public domain status can be automatically > assumed of the ASTER data. > > http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/about.asp You are correct. It's a NASA/METI project and as such isn't in the public domain. The exact license terms are an arrangement between NASA and METI. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Ian Dees wrote: > > NASA = a US federal government organization. All data originated by US > federal organizations (and especially when funded by tax payer dollars) is > in the public domain. I would imagine that the licensing terms they give are > superseded by these rules. ASTER is a joint mission between NASA a few Japanese organizations. As such, I don't think that public domain status can be automatically assumed of the ASTER data. http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/about.asp -- Jeff Ollie ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: > For satellite imagery it would be a huge win even if we were allowed > to just use them for tracing on a closed WMS server (as we're doing in > Gaza), even if we ideally would like to be allowed to do more. NASA = a US federal government organization. All data originated by US federal organizations (and especially when funded by tax payer dollars) is in the public domain. I would imagine that the licensing terms they give are superseded by these rules. ...or am I missing something? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
(This thread was accidentally off-list) On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:30 PM, MP wrote: >> As it turns out the first clause is (apparently) to facilitate >> tracking of how the data is used and so that they can announce >> updates, and the second is to ensure proper attribution. I've asked >> them permission to quote their complete reply but that's basically it. > What about derived data? SRTM is used to generate hillshades and > contour lines for example. ASTER data would be good for that too. Do > they have some less strict terms about distributing such derived data > (like requiring only attribution), or is their policy for it the same? The ASTER project is producing a lot more than just global contour lines, they've been taking satellite imagery for example: http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/images/reykjavik.jpg That particular image is a lot clearer than the equivalent NASA Landsat imagery of Reykjavík which is currently the best free source we can use for tracing. So in any dialog with the ASTER people we should be pursuing a wide array of options applicable for each of their datasets. For satellite imagery it would be a huge win even if we were allowed to just use them for tracing on a closed WMS server (as we're doing in Gaza), even if we ideally would like to be allowed to do more. > What about derived data? SRTM is used to generate hillshades and > contour lines for example. ASTER data would be good for that too. Do > they have some less strict terms about distributing such derived data > (like requiring only attribution), or is their policy for it the same? If they really don't want to allow redistribution of the source dataset they're very unlikely to allow redistribution of generated contours under a free license once they realize what that entails. It would be trivial to automatically generate vector data equivalent to the original dataset from any (lossless) generated contour lines, thus circumventing the original limited use clause. I'm *guess* what the ASTOR people really want is to just ensure data quality with that first clause, and if so we can probably convince them to release it under more liberal terms that would be useful to us (including ones that require attribution). Certainly nobody is confused about the canonical source of the SRTM data being NASA despite it being in the public domain. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
In such cases, wouldn't be enough to add a source=NASA or source=ASTER tag? [] 2009/7/2 Tyler > Ævar, Thanks for trying to get clarification. Despite my disagreeing that > there is any real restriction on the data that affects its use in OSM, > clarification and explicit permission is always a good thing. > > This should have been cross-posted to legal, probably. And let me preface > it all with IANAL... Yet. > > Martin: > >> What about derived data? SRTM is used to generate hillshades and contour >> lines for example. ASTER data would be good for that too. Do they have some >> less strict terms about distributing such derived data (like requiring only >> attribution), or is their policy for it the same? > > > I take it to mean that you can re-distribute derived data, that would be > the "project of intended use" part. They have that in there so that they > can mitigate the number of sources of the ASTER, so that there's not a bunch > of different ASTER Jun 2009 datasets all saying they're the same thing on a > bunch of different University servers free to the public. > > Jeff: > >> That clause seems very similar to the BSD advertising clause (and >> is problematic for the same reasons) >> > > I assume you mean "When presenting or publishing ASTER GDEM data, I agree > to include > 'ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA.'" That's pretty standard > attribution stuff. Which we should want to encourage. Being able to find the > source is probably sufficient (so on a printed map you could say "for a list > of all the sources see www.ReallyAwesomeVolcanoMap.com/sources"), but also > doesn't appear to be a required agreement (it doesn't have the "required", > which leads me to believe it is optional). > > If there were a more standard way to get attribution data on the slippymap > (a link: view all attributed sources in this extent) then OSM would probably > be fine, and 3rd parties attributing data correctly is the 3rd party's > responsibility. Immutable historical attribution would also be cool so that > once all the roads from TIGER are correct and totally different there is > still historical attribution data. The attribution mess has been what's > stopped me from using a lot of available State data. Which has no > restrictions as long as there is attribution. And attribution is such a > cluster with OSM data right now that I just don't really want to deal with > it, there's lots to do elsewhere. > > The BSD argument was that there would be a spiraling out of control "This > product was derived from this product was derived from this product was > derived from..." a better restriction would have been. "When presenting or > publishing ASTER GDEM data, I agree to provide attribution to METI and > NASA." Which would allow for more options on how to give the attribution. > But like I said, that seems optional to me. > > Finally, if someone is planning on doing any sort of stuff with the ASTER > GDEMs in the US, there's higher resolution data available from USGS, 3m in > some cases, so use that instead. > > -Tyler > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > > -- Arlindo Saraiva Pereira Jr. Bacharelando em Sistemas de Informação - UNIRIO - uniriotec.br Consultor de Software Livre da Uniriotec Consultoria - uniriotec.com Acadêmico: arlindo.pere...@uniriotec.br Profissional: arlindo.pere...@uniriotec.com Geral: cont...@arlindopereira.com Tel.: +5521 92504072 Jabber/Google Talk: nig...@nighto.net Skype: nighto_sumomo Chave pública: BD065DEC ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
Ævar, Thanks for trying to get clarification. Despite my disagreeing that there is any real restriction on the data that affects its use in OSM, clarification and explicit permission is always a good thing. This should have been cross-posted to legal, probably. And let me preface it all with IANAL... Yet. Martin: > What about derived data? SRTM is used to generate hillshades and contour > lines for example. ASTER data would be good for that too. Do they have some > less strict terms about distributing such derived data (like requiring only > attribution), or is their policy for it the same? I take it to mean that you can re-distribute derived data, that would be the "project of intended use" part. They have that in there so that they can mitigate the number of sources of the ASTER, so that there's not a bunch of different ASTER Jun 2009 datasets all saying they're the same thing on a bunch of different University servers free to the public. Jeff: > That clause seems very similar to the BSD advertising clause (and > is problematic for the same reasons) > I assume you mean "When presenting or publishing ASTER GDEM data, I agree to include 'ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA.'" That's pretty standard attribution stuff. Which we should want to encourage. Being able to find the source is probably sufficient (so on a printed map you could say "for a list of all the sources see www.ReallyAwesomeVolcanoMap.com/sources"), but also doesn't appear to be a required agreement (it doesn't have the "required", which leads me to believe it is optional). If there were a more standard way to get attribution data on the slippymap (a link: view all attributed sources in this extent) then OSM would probably be fine, and 3rd parties attributing data correctly is the 3rd party's responsibility. Immutable historical attribution would also be cool so that once all the roads from TIGER are correct and totally different there is still historical attribution data. The attribution mess has been what's stopped me from using a lot of available State data. Which has no restrictions as long as there is attribution. And attribution is such a cluster with OSM data right now that I just don't really want to deal with it, there's lots to do elsewhere. The BSD argument was that there would be a spiraling out of control "This product was derived from this product was derived from this product was derived from..." a better restriction would have been. "When presenting or publishing ASTER GDEM data, I agree to provide attribution to METI and NASA." Which would allow for more options on how to give the attribution. But like I said, that seems optional to me. Finally, if someone is planning on doing any sort of stuff with the ASTER GDEMs in the US, there's higher resolution data available from USGS, 3m in some cases, so use that instead. -Tyler ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: > > # When presenting or publishing ASTER GDEM data, I agree to include > "ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA." That clause seems very similar to the BSD advertising clause (and is problematic for the same reasons): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#UC%20Berkeley%20advertising%20clause -- Jeff Ollie ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Explaining to NASA why the ASTER data should be freely licensed
> As it turns out the first clause is (apparently) to facilitate > tracking of how the data is used and so that they can announce > updates, and the second is to ensure proper attribution. I've asked > them permission to quote their complete reply but that's basically it. What about derived data? SRTM is used to generate hillshades and contour lines for example. ASTER data would be good for that too. Do they have some less strict terms about distributing such derived data (like requiring only attribution), or is their policy for it the same? Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
