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

[Matt Amos]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 12:14 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> 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
>
> Wait a minute.
>
> If I run "beerintheOSM" as a crowdourced project - say, a Wiki - and
> people can enter new pubs, and the names are entered by those who create
> the entries, and I don't even store lat/lon locations, I just allow my
> users to add an OSM node id in some kind of template which I then use to
> retrieve and display the map for the area, then surely I do not have to
> release the records?
>
> * The name was not taken from OSM
> * the location is not even stored in my database
> * the OSM ID... well yes this would have to be released but not with
> context, i.e. I could simply release a list of OSM IDs saying "these are
> used in beerintheOSM somewhere

this is the crux of the question. the ODbL makes no distinction
between lat/lon data, ID data, or any other sort of data. so the
question then becomes; if i'm using some data from an ODbL database
and incorporating that into my database, do i have to release all of
my database, or just the bits of it which came from or were derived
from the ODbL database?

> If anyone doubts the above then think what would happen if I didn't use
> the OSM ID to draw a map, instead the OSM ID would just be listed there
> in the text ("by the way, this pub is OSM node #1234") - which is the
> same from a database perspective. Surely such reference cannot trigger
> any viral effect?

that reference isn't any different from any other datum from the
database, hence the question ;-)

cheers,

matt