On 5 November 2012 17:56, Richard Fairhurst <rich...@systemed.net> wrote: > Chris Hill wrote: >> So the answer, as always with this sort of question, is no we cannot >> use that data without written permission of the copyright holder to >> use this data in OSM for any purpose. I don't think that is likely to >> be forthcoming. > > Don't forget, too, that Tesco probably didn't create the data themselves - > they might have sent a guy out with a GPS to each of their stores, but I > doubt it. More likely it's referenced against some external, commercial, > protected-up-to-the-eyeballs dataset. Even if someone in Tesco's "Customer > Contact Centre" (or whatever) says yes, they likely aren't aware of upstream > copyright issues.
I'd have thought that Tesco would only benefit from having their stores shown on OSM maps, so I don't see why they wouldn't give permission (to the extent that they can) for us to use their data -- if we can manage to persuade the right person to consider the question. The coordinates are indeed problematic, but even without them the data could be useful. I agree that an automated import isn't the way to go here, but some sort of keep-right-esq tool that highlights places where a store is expected but is not present in OSM would be really useful. Given aerial imagery and an approximate store location, it will often be possible to identify the right building and map it out, adding the store details from the Tesco data. As for finding the locations, the address may give enough of a clue to local mappers. Maybe this could even be converted to approximate coordinates by Nominatim? More useful might be the postcodes. Since it seems we now have centroid coordinates available via an ONS dataset (see http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2012-October/014055.html ) we could presumably use them to locate each store with reasonable accuracy. Would there be any copyright / database right issues with doing this, assuming Tesco give their permission to use the addresses they hold, and we're able to use the postcode data from OSN under the Open Government License? Robert. -- Robert Whittaker _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk