[OSM-legal-talk] hands on commercial applications

Mika Semann Mika.Semann at gmx.de
Thu Jun 19 15:55:56 BST 2008


Hi !

I know this topic has been discussed before and probably in detail - anyway I am searching for a precise answer which I find difficult to extract from the FAQ's and the mailing archive.

At the company I am working with we would like to develop a low-budget aeronautical navigation system which shall include a moving map system as one out of many other features. Wihin the moving map we need to display different data especially aeronautical data like airspaces, airports, navaids etc. and a basic "background" map as well. We probably have to use commercial aeronautical data due to different reasons (availability, reliability etc.). This data shall be displayed on top of a basic "background" map showing transportation network, waterbodys, populated places etc. I have found public domain data for this purpose but I am a bit unhappy about the VMAP Level 0 street network data I planned to use which seems to be quite old and imprecise. This is why I would like to use the openstreetmap data for the roads. Thereby we would need only the 3 topmost classes. We won't do any routing on this data; it will be used only for visually enhancing the background map. I understand this data as being independent from the other layer(s). We won't use Openstreetmap data to collect or enhance other data we will only visualize the data together. I have to point out that it is not the moving map display let alone the street map layer we are trying to make money with but our hardware.

So the question is: are we allowed to use parts of the Openstreetmap data in our system ???

What we of course can't do is to put this commercial aeronautical data we will buy (or licence) under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license as it is not our own data.

If it is not allowed to use the data as described above would it be different if we give our customers the possibility to upload Openstreetmap data on our device themselves ? I have just done so with my personal Garmin handheld GPS receiver as it is described here:  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Mkgmap. As this is an official openstreetmap website I assume that it is legal from the Openstreetmap liscence point of view.

>From my personal point of view, being a (beginning) distributor to Openstreetmap myself I don't see a big problem  if someone uses this data  for a commercial application as this in the long run should make satellite navigation cheaper and probably more reliable. I personally wouldn't like the idea if someone would SELL this data, let's say as an data update for a commercial application. From my point of view the idea of Openstreetmap must be to give everyone the possibility to use precise data on the GPS of his/her choice without paying for the data. I am not willing to pay lets say Garmin for (incomplete) mapdata which is already more expensive as their receivers especially as I need such data for different locations (home and holiday locations etc.). 

What is your opinion ? Hope to hear from you !
Best regards

Mika
-- 
Ist Ihr Browser Vista-kompatibel? Jetzt die neuesten 
Browser-Versionen downloaden: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/browser




More information about the legal-talk mailing list