[OSM-legal-talk] OSM content on locked platforms

[Nic Roets]

On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 3:33 PM, Erik Johansson <erjohan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 12:36 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
>> I would be interested in your thoughts on the legal situation here. Is
>> distributing an OSM-derived data set on such a closed platform still
>> CC-BY-SA conformant?
>>
>> Could I, if I were selling such an app, just say: "Here's the package on
>> my web site for download - of course to install it on the iPhone you
>> must go through the Appstore and pay $9.99 but if you jailbreak your
>> phone then you can use the free version from my web page. Of course by
>> jailbreaking it you violate Apple's license conditions..."
>
> Actually AFAIK you have to use Appstore to distribute you apps, if you
> use pirate channels you can get your App removed (I'm not certain of
> this).

I think Frederik meant that you only put the data on your own website.
And if it's a simple conversion of the planet then it's really not
necessary. (B.t.w. have anyone checked how complete the source for the
Waze Iphone app is ?)

But as he pointed out several years ago, a developer can use a format
that is every difficult to reverse engineer and because he is not
obliged to release the source of the client, the data will be of
little use to anyone.

There another issue with a provider of cloud services. He can do a lot
of processing for his individual end users. One of the steps can be to
remove all the content the user does not need (to save band width off
course). Then it will be impossible to import his improvements back
into the OSM database on a significant scale. And if he is really
nasty, he can degrade the service of any user found to be leaking data
(back to OSM). So SA is almost impossible to enforce on a cloud
provider.