[OSM-legal-talk] Licensing implications when extending POI with external metadata

[Joao Neto]

Great points Anthony. Thanks for sharing!

To be honest I think the share-alike aspect of the license is too
restrictive and working against the project. The most successful projects in
the open source / community space all seem to have a very healthy balance
between individual contribution and private contribution/investment. I think
the share-alike requirement is killing the potential for growing a private
ecosystem. In my opinion there aren't that many sustainable business models
in this space where companies can freely share their data. If you do that,
then eventually someone will copy your data and business model. With your
"differentiation factor" gone, you'll be out of business pretty soon.

I'll investigate the possibility of building a business that generates
significant contribution to OSM POI data, but I'm skeptical that it can be
made profitable while sharing data with the competition. Most likely I'll
have to drop the idea of using OSM data and l'll have to license a private
POI dataset or try to build my own - which is something I'm not looking
forward to do. :)

Just my 2 cents.

Joao


On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 3:58 AM, Joao Neto <joao.p.neto at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If the OSM POI data is displayed together (i.e. in the same page or same
> > screen or same map, etc.) with data and POIs from other sources, does the
> > "share-alike" apply?
>
> The question is whether the OSM POI data and the proprietary POI data
> constitute "separate and independent works in themselves".  I'd say
> being on the same page or same screen, in itself, is fine, but if you
> mix the sources together into a single map (regardless of the
> technical process used to create that map), then you must make the
> map, including the underlying data, CC-BY-SA.  Until that point, I
> think you're fine, so long as you keep the data in separate tables,
> and probably even if you keep it in the same table with a column that
> distinguishes the two.
>
> Some people disagree with this, and feel that if the works are
> combined by the end user, for instance in javascript, that everything
> is okay.  Personally I think the *intent* of CC-BY-SA is not to
> include such a loophole, as there is effectively no difference between
> a mashup made on the server and a mashup made on the client.
>
> Another thing to consider is that making the mashup on the client side
> requires sending the data to the client in a form that is easily
> copied.  And if your map is publicly available, that means it's highly
> likely that someone is going to come along and extract your supposedly
> proprietary data and use a loophole of their own - the fact that
> factual data is largely unprotected from copying in most parts of the
> world.
>
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