[OSM-legal-talk] ODbL "virality" questions

[Matt Amos]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 2:55 PM, James Livingston <doctau at mac.com> wrote:
> On 06/10/2009, at 11:30 PM, Matt Amos wrote:
>> so far, all the responses seem to indicate that everyone thinks
>> linking to OSM data by ID is OK. what about Andy's idea, though? is it
>> OK to take a location, name and possibly an ID as well to perform
>> "fuzzy" linking?
>>
>> my view is that all the linked-to OSM information would have to be
>> released; the list of (location, name, ID) tuples. but that it would
>> still be OK to not release the linked-by proprietary information.
>
> That sounds good in theory, but I think at some point getting out the
> locations and names of things could be "Extraction and Re-utilisation
> of the a Substantial part of the Contents".

yes, i think it is.

> Am I allowed to mine the database for the name and location of all the
> pubs and restaurants in the world, without having the data fall under
> the ODbL?  If not, how could it become okay if I claim to just be
> using them as lookup keys? I guess you could have a database with all
> of your proprietary data, and second one which acts as a link between
> the fuzzy-OSM data and IDs in your database, and only release the
> second.

no-one is suggesting that the extraction of names, locations and IDs
would be somehow outside of the ODbL. any site using these as lookup
keys would have to release that data under the ODbL. the question is,
should they have to further release the data in their database which
is using those lookup keys?

as a concrete example, let's pretend i have a site, beerintheOSM,
which rates pubs and allows commenting and photo uploads. if i'm
storing the reviews linked against pubs linked against OSM
(name/location/ID), i definitely have to release the
(name/location/ID) records - that's not up for discussion. should i
also have to release the reviews, comments and photos records despite
the fact that they have no OSM-derived data in them? should i have to
release my entire database, including my users table?

cheers,

matt