[OSM-legal-talk] OS Opendata & the new license

[Robert Whittaker (OSM)]

Dave F. <davefox at madasafish.com> wrote:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey_Opendata#License
>
> Can someone confirm/deny that it's still interoperable with new license as
> it's worded at the moment.
>
> Has anyone been in contact with OS to discuss this?

I've been exchanging emails with OS about their license and OSM for some time.

I had an email from OS today in which they state that they believe
that ODbL is incompatible with their attribution requirements (because
there is no requirement for produced works to carry attribution to
them) and also incompatible with the proposed Contributor Terms v1.0
(in particular as attribution is not guaranteed in future licenses).

OS also say that they are not going to consider any changes to the
license themselves prior to the publication of a new licensing
framework by the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI). See:
http://perspectives.opsi.gov.uk/2010/06/development-of-the-uk-government-licensing-framework-.html

My contact at OS thinks it likely that they will adopt the OPSI
recommendations -- so we should probably be lobbying OPSI to include
something that is explicitly ODbL-compatible as the recommended
license for data-sets. Unfortunately, I don't know what sort of time
table OPSI are working to. Their new scheme may come too late for OSM.

As for the CTs, my personal view is that it's OSMF that needs to
compromise here, and it would be unreasonable of us to expect large
data providers to do so.

> If it isn't will this mean previous traced/imported Opendata will have to be removed?

If the incompatibilities in the licenses / CTs are not resolved before
the OSM license change goes ahead, then as far as I can see, the only
option would be to remove all OS OpenData derived mapping from OSM.

-- 
Robert Whittaker