Hi,<br><br>This is related to a question in the Flickr thread about whether OSM should provide services as well as data, and is something I've been meaning to ask for a while:<br><br>Are there any "terms of use" for either the XML API or the Mapnik/Osmarender map tiles?<br>
<br>eg if someone wants to embed the our Mapnik tiles on their website (eg using OpenLayers), can they do so? Does it depend on commercial/non-commercial? Bandwidth required?<br clear="all"><br>The 'export' tab on the map gives you some iframe html which allows you to embeds the mapnik tiles (via the embed.html page), so I'm presuming that this kind of usage is encouraged, but nowhere (that I've found) does it explicitly state how you can use this. Presumably, if someone like Google or Wikipedia started embedding our map tiles, our servers would get enough of a hammering that we'd ask them to stop (hence Wikipedia wanting to host their own tiles)?<br>
<br>Personally, I think that providing a reliable tile server (containing a well designed map for good all-round use) that anyone can use, so long as they give appropriate attribution, is something OSM should support and promote - even if other commercial and non-commercial services (Cloudmade, etc) are available. It's also something we already seem to do a good job at.<br>
<br>However I don't know whether this crosses some major ideological division within the community??<br><br>Either way, could we at least try to make some form of 'terms of use' for the API and map tiles available?<br>
<br>Frankie<br><br><br>-- <br>Frankie Roberto<br>Experience Designer, Rattle<br>0114 2706977<br><a href="http://www.rattlecentral.com">http://www.rattlecentral.com</a><br><br>