[OSM-legal-talk] New license and mechanically created derivations

[Iván Sánchez Ortega]

El Sábado, 29 de Noviembre de 2008, Ben Supnik escribió:
> I would like to build a mechanically created non-factual work - that
> work will have as its input data non-factual data created by my fellow
> employees (we own rights to it) and OSM.
[...]
> I can't tell what I am required to do with the ODbL.  It appears that
> there are _no_ restrictions on how I license/distribute my derived work
> as long as:
>
> - I don't change the OSM data and then hoard it (I do all my edits in
> OSM and not later) and
> - My derived work isn't anything like a database.

This is right (and I would be most pleased if all the edits were done directly 
in OSM). However, I see other plausible solutions under the ODbL:

- You change the OSM data, mix it with propietary data, but never release the 
results to anybody (i.e. internal use inside the company only).


- You do your pseudo-3D buildings, and then decide to release them to the 
public, along with some propietary data. In this scenario, the ODbL still 
applies, but the factual info license does not.
As the legalese definition of "database" is very broad (even a dead-tree 
phonebook is a DB), the ODbL will stick to any computer file containing any 
piece of OSM data, or any pseudo-3D building, even if the file contains 
propietary data.

In the last example, the ODbL only requires that the DB (or the file) is 
readable by anyone (technically, the license requires that you 
allow "extraction of data from the DB" to anybody). In my understanding, this 
would mean no encription, no weird DRM or copy-protection schemes, and not 
being tied to one piece of software to read the file (think MS Office format 
tying you up to MS Office).


Keep in mind that the ODbL only covers the database **as a whole**. The 
individual nodes and ways are covered only by the Factual Info License.

> Are there parts of OSM that might be non-factual, and if so, what would
> the corresponding copyright-based license be?

It is my understanding that *all* the individual pieces of data will be 
considered facts, as soon as the license change is over.


> My goal here is not to see how much I can get for how little...just to
> understand how to use OSM data such that (1) I am following the
> intentions of those licensing the data and (2) avoiding legal risk to my
> company.

I think that, as long as your company is contributing data back, the OSM 
community will be happy :-D


Cheers,
-- 
----------------------------------
Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan at sanchezortega.es>

Más vale mero aficionado que besugo profesional
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