[Imports] Redmond WA Address Import proposal

[zyphlar]

I disagree with Mike and Greg and agree with Minh here. Having read the
full context of the license, you agree to these when *you* access their GIS
website and download their data, not when anyone anywhere uses that data.
"You" in this case is most likely Matthew who, in absence of this license,
could try things like suing the government if they have wrong data or if
the data portal goes down (because America just loves suing.) The substance
of the agreement is saying, we're publishing this but you can't get mad at
us if anything bad happens as a result.

So Matthew says "yeah sure" and redistributes the data once to his
volunteer OSM database which seems allowed. And OSM does whatever it wants
from there which also doesn't seem disallowed. (If OSM data is wrong and
someone sues it, firstly OSM itself probably has disclaimers but secondly
it would say "hey Matthew what the heck" and Matthew would say "whelp it's
on me or on OSM, it's not on King County because we agreed it wouldn't be"
which is honestly the case anyway since there's a good chance the data will
have been modified or presented slightly differently by the time it gets
shown to anyone.

And yes King County can say "oops nevermind access is revoked" but probably
not retroactively because the license is about access to their portal, not
retaining copies or redistributing.

I don't think any of that is the issue.

Here's what I do think is a bigger issue: they straight up say that they
can't guarantee that their data isn't copyrighted. We do in fact want them
to guarantee that their data isn't copyrighted. I would suggest clarifying
this with them and writing because someone asserting a copyright claim on
OSM data is the number one thing we are concerned about. Not silly local
licensing politics or OSM hypothetically agreeing to take liability on King
county's behalf or anything like that.

As Minh said, this is pretty standard US legal stuff that basically amounts
to "this is provided as-is, you can't sue us about it."


On Friday, November 25, 2022, Matthew Whilden <matthew.whilden at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Thanks everyone for the thoughtful replies. For now, I'll consider this
import blocked until the license issues can be resolved satisfactorily. The
City of Redmond has a similar data set with similar licensing so I'll also
reach out to them. Ultimately, if this falls through that's fine with me. I
can take what I've learned and work on another import from a less
encumbered source.
> Matt (watmildon)
> On Fri, Nov 25, 2022 at 9:08 AM Richard Welty <rwelty at averillpark.net>
wrote:
>>
>> On 11/25/22 11:54 AM, Greg Troxel wrote:
>> >
>> > Minh Nguyen <minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us> writes:
>>
>> > And, in this case, it's not just that we can have a disclaimer.  These
>> > terms are required to be followed when OSM redistributes, under the
text
>> > ofthe King County license as I read it.
>>
>> redistribution requirements are a disqualifier, because redistribution
>> is something that OSM does not and cannot control. there are potential
>> imports that i dropped because of redistribution requirements.
>>
>> richard
>>
>> --
>> rwelty at averillpark.net
>>   Averill Park Networking - GIS & IT Consulting
>>   OpenStreetMap - PostgreSQL - Linux
>>   Java - Web Applications - Search
>>
>>
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>
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