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

[Matt Amos]

On 10/7/09, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Matt Amos wrote:
>> can the SA requirement be satisfied by saying that we consider the
>> extracted IDs to be an ODbL part of a collective database, where the
>> proprietary data is the other part? it would require the ODbL part
>> (i.e: the list of IDs) to be made available, but nothing else.
>
> It would work, but I'm trying to think if this would have adverse side
> effects.
>
> Can this be compared to Google importing all of OSM into MapMaker and
> then only making available the OSM part and not anything newly created?
> Would that still count as a collective database? If not, then where is
> the boundary?

yep, that's the question ;-)

> I'm going back to this notion of "usefulness". Firstly, is a database a
> database if it is one-dimensional? My feeling is that a database must
> always combine at least two values: Have one, look up the other; have
> the other, look up the first. Is a list of all valid post codes in a
> country still a database if it doesn't have names or geometries? Is the
> list of all latitudes in OSM still a database?

possibly. if we consider the IDs (or any other one dimension) to be
insubstantial, then this might work. the problem comes when using the
scheme that Andy suggested. it may not be practical to link to a
single dimension of an OSM dataset - it might be necessary to extract
multiple dimensions to do good fuzzy matching.

> It could be that an extract of some OSM IDs is not even a derived database
>
> Assuming for a moment it were a database, then, being rather useless, is
> it substantial? Could we perhaps say that if you extract only one
> dimension from OSM, this can never be a substantial extract - a list of
> latitudes, a list of longitudes, a list of keys or a list of values, or
> a list of IDs?

from the ODbL:

“Derivative Database” – Means a database based upon the Database, and
includes any translation, adaptation, arrangement, modification, or
any other alteration of the Database or of a Substantial part of the
Contents. This includes, but is not limited to, Extracting or
Re-utilising the whole or a Substantial part of the Contents in a new
Database.

so, if we consider ID extraction to be substantial, then the answer is
definitely yes - it would be an arrangement of a substantial part of
the contents. if we consider IDs to be insubstantial then it would be
OK.

special note: the word "new" in the above definition means "other or
different from the first", not "created from scratch".

> Or could we perhaps even specify that anything that doesn't use our
> geometry is not substantial? A list of all pubs in Madrid would be
> substantial since it needs geometry; a list of all pubs on the planet
> would not be substantial. That would neatly cover anyone wanting to use
> any number of OSM IDs for linking as he would never use the geometry
> from OSM.

are you suggesting that someone wanting to run beerintheOSM would have
to have a worldwide scope? it wouldn't even be possible to be
country-specific because that would give it a geographic scope and
therefore depend on the geometry?

> But that would again raise a cascading substantial-ness problem - what
> if I publish an OSM extract of Madrid and someone else counts all pubs
> in there.

i think counts, or any other summary statistic of the non-identifiable
sort (i.e: that which would pass privacy regulations), could be
considered insubstantial. the number of pubs in any given large-enough
bounding box, certainly a city or country, shouldn't be considered a
substantial extract.

in any case, the cascading substantialness is already taken care of:
if my dataset A is substantial and you derive B from that, the same
standards of substantialness apply to your extract of B from A as they
do to my extract of A from OSM. if A is insubstantial, then it would
be impossible to make a substantial extract from that insubstantial
extract. or so the theory goes ;-)

cheers,

matt