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

Eugene Alvin Villar seav80 at gmail.com
Sat Jan 22 01:18:44 GMT 2011


Joao,

There's a difference between the share-alike in CC-BY-SA and ODbL.
Your preferred use case would be a fit for ODbL (which distinguishes
between derivative databases and produced works, such as a mashup with
separate data) but problematic for CC-BY-SA whose share-alike affects
more than just the data.


On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 11:32 PM, Joao Neto <joao.p.neto at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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