[OSM-legal-talk] Making OSM Public domain

[Peter Miller]

 Frederik Ramm wrote: 
> My pet example is this: Student writes thesis on public transport, gets
> lots of data from local transport authority under the provision that it
> is only used for academic purposes (maybe proprietary; maybe legally
> protected because drivers' whereabouts can be derived from the data
> etc.). Student wants to combine this with OSM data for his analyses. Now
> EITHER the license allows this, but then it will also allow the
> transport authority themselves to use the data without releasing stuff -
> or it doesn't, which will then lead to our student calling TeleAtlas and
> asking them for a free "academic" sample of their data he can use,
> sending out the message: OSM is all nice and dandy but if you want to do
> serious work, better call TeleAtlas.
> 

Thanks, a nice Use Case. I have just added it to the wiki so we can get a
legal opinion on it. This Use Case makes it clear that the use of the public
transport data must be protected but that derivates of the OSM data must be
provided back. It is my understanding that this should be possible to
achieve but will require some work on the draft SA licence. I will now get a
professional opinion on it from our lawyer.

"The licence should allow a student a write a thesis on public transport,
who gets lots of data from local transport authority under the provision
that it is only used for academic purposes (maybe proprietary; maybe legally
protected because drivers' whereabouts can be derived from the data etc.)
and who then combines it with OSM data for analyses. The student wants to
make the resulting analysis available within the university and to the bus
company and possibly to others. The licence should ensure that any this is
allowed but that any future changes to the OSM Data part of the DB must be
covered by this licence as the Derivative Database but that the public
transport element does not.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Brief_for_proposed_OSM_licence#Combi
ning_OSM_mapping_data_with_proprietary_public_transport_schedules

Does anyone else have any 'favourite Use Cases' they are not telling us
about!



Regards,


Peter