[OSM-legal-talk] new license use case questions

James Livingston lists at sunsetutopia.com
Fri Jul 9 12:48:07 BST 2010


On 09/07/2010, at 1:07 AM, David Carmean wrote:
> They use a shapefile generated from
> a filtered snapshot of OSM data--leaving only roads--as a base layer.
> 
> If they do nothing else but serve this one-time snapshot as a base
> layer, what are their obligations?

My opinion is that since they've changed the data (stripping out the non-road bits) that creates a derived database, which strictly speaking has to be provided. However like with similar situations with the GPL, this may not be as onerous as it sounds - many people package binaries of GPL'd software without putting the source along side it.

Per ODBl 4.6b, you would just need to tell anyone asking the filtering algorithm you used - for example "remove all ways that don't have a highway=* tag" (in machine readable form).



> Secondly, what if one of their staff, being unfamiliar with OSM but a
> GIS expert, sees a problem with one or more roads about which they
> have personal knowledge, and "fixes" those problems in the GIS data
> only--then publishing the result as a mapserver layer only.  What are
> their obligations in this case?

Making either the derived database or the changes available. Since it's not algorithmic, you have to provide a diff (or the whole derived db) if someone asked for it.

If you are doing a one-off import, you'd just need to either have a copy of the original to produce a diff upon request, or be willing to produce a dump of the OSM-based part of the database.

If they're not doing a one-off import of OSM data, you'd presumably have some way of merging you local changes with the upstream changes, so a diff should be easy.


> Third: there is the usual problem/condition (depending on your 
> political leanings) of divergence in the tag values.  For example, 
> "surface=Dirt" vs. "surface=dirt", "surface=cement" vs. "surface=concrete", 
> etc.  I'd certainly want to "fix" that, but if I were that agency, I woulnd't 
> have the time/skills to make a 'bot fix back in the OSM database.

Strictly speaking you'd have to provide those changes. But if it's a rendering rule then it's not a DB change, and if it's automated you can just provide the algorithm "change surface=Dirt to surface=dirt".


The two things to note are, 1) like with the GPL, you have to offer it to the recipients, however if it's not "interesting" (e.g. just filtering),  no-one will probably ask, and 2) if it's an algorithmic change, you just have to provide the algorithm.


-- 
James



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