[OSM-legal-talk] License Question

[Sam Larsen]

> >Do you [Kevin] want your data to be usable without restriction, or are  you
> trying to restrict it?
> We want the data to be available without  restriction.
> 
> >Do you want to be able to extract data from OSM and  combine it with your
> data?
> Possibly... Let me give you some  examples;
> 
> Our data relates to the location and capabilities of electric  vehicle
> charging locations ("charge points"). Imagine a scenario where we  have added
> details of the charge point that located in a parking lot that  already
> recorded in OSM. Then, a third party extracts the charge point data  AND the
> parking lot data. Presumably, the parking lot data is covered by the  OSM
> license and not our license (i.e. the third party cannot use it  without
> restriction).
> 
> In another scenario, imagine an OSM contributor  adds the charge point data
> to OSM. Presumably, this data is covered by the  OSM license not ours.
> 
> The fundamental issue for us is that we are trying  to encourage the charge
> point industry to abandon the 20+ proprietary and  closed databases that
> exist today and support a single open database. As far  as I can see, the OSM
> licenses are unsuitable for  this.
> 

The OSM license in the current state is probably not what you are looking for.  
However, there have been many public domain datasets added to OSM, when this 
happens, the person/account which adds the data agrees to license the data under 
the OSM license.  You can still hold a different copy of your data as public 
domain for people to download, but if a user wants to download the data directly 
from OSM (& associated features) that data is then under the OSM license.

Alternatively, you could just keep your data seperate as public domain and 
overlay the data on OSM (mashup style).  But then you would lose the 
connectivity between your data and the OSM street/parking data network.  It 
would also require you to build the mashup.

Personally, if i were looking for an open license to use for this dataset, 
although CC-BY-SA is not perfect (& probably ODbL) they still IMO adhere to the 
spirit of an open license and the benefits of having the data connected to 
associated OSM features (rendered by OSM, downloadable with OSM, routeable with 
OSM, searchable via OSM/nominatum, updated by contributors of OSM etc...) 
outweighs the small number of restrictions in the OSM license.

Sam  

> 
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