[OSM-legal-talk] some questions about "Produced Works" under the ODbL

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Oliver (skobbler) wrote:
> Consider a "produced work" of something that cannot be reproduced because
> disassembling is not possible. Take a "cake" for example (kitchen wise, just
> for understanding the concept). You cannot produce a another cake from the
> first cake or alter it because you cannot disassemble it to the original
> ingredients since the ingredients have been transformed in a chemical
> process. The cake would be a Produced Work.
> 
> If you take a car it can always be disassembled to its individual pieces and
> be rebuild. The car would not be a Produced Work.

That is an interesting concept but I think it is misleading.

What you're saying, basically, is that making a cake loses the (or some) 
properties of the ingredients, thus a produced work; making a car 
doesn't, thus not produced. (Of course making a car also entails 
irreversible actions but let's ignore that for the moment.)

Transferred back to the map database, your argument would be that 
anything which does not allow one to go back to the data is a produced work.

However, this is definitely wrong. If I make an excerpt of the full 
database, with no information loss, that's certainly not a produced 
work. But throwing away some bits - for example by simplifying the 
geometries - means that I still have a derived database and not a 
produced work, even though the process is not reversible.

The produced work starts where being a database stops. (And yes I know 
that's not helpful.)

The proposed community guideline talks of "intent". This hints at the 
fact that there may be an overlap; you and I may be producing the exact 
same thing from OSM, but yours may be a produced work and mine not.

For example, I could take the bz2'ed planet file and transform it into a 
57000x57000 pixel true-colour PNG image with the intent of being able to 
reverse engineer that PNG image into the planet file. My image is 
clearly a derived database. Now you might be a crazy artist who wants to 
give an extra touch to some work of yours, and without much thinking you 
take the planet file and slap on an image header and have it displayed. 
The image was not created with the intent of extracting the original 
data, so it is a produced work - even though the process is entirely 
reversible and the original planet file could be created from your image.

On a smaller, and perhaps less unbelievable, scale, someone might create 
a special fine-line map rendering from OSM because he wants to 
laser-etch the stuff. Produced work. Someone else creates the exact same 
fine-line map rendering because he wants to scan it in with his map OCR 
program - derived database.

> Also consider the intention behind the concept: The idea is that if someone
> improves the original source then this improvement should go back to the
> community. 

This is often said but it is my understanding that, as with GPL, any 
improvement you make to the data must only be made available under ODbL 
to those who are in receipt of the produced work made from it. This may 
or may not be "the community"; it would be entirely legal for me to 
improve the data, make a printed atlas, sell you the atlas, hand over 
the improved and ODbL-licensed data to you and say: "This is the only 
copy of the data. I recommend you shred it right away, as this will make 
your atlas unique!"

Interesting question: If you did shred the data, would you be allowed to 
publicly display your Atlas afterwards?

Bye
Frederik