[OSM-legal-talk] BC Open Government License

[Paul Norman]

The BC government has released data under the Open Government License for
Government of BC Information[1] which is based on the same license used for
OS OpenData information[2]. OS OpenData can be used in OSM[3]

The OGL BC is, broadly speaking, an attribution only license that makes
allowances for attribution where combining information from multiple
sources.

The only potential concerns are under section 7, exemptions, and section 10,
governing law.

7a and 7b cover information that the FIPPA act prohibits the disclosure of.
The government does not have the authority to grant permission to use
information FIPPA prevents the disclosure of so even if these clauses were
not present it would not change what they had licensed.[4]

In practice this is a non-issue since the type of data that would be of
interest to OSM is not personal information that the government is
prohibited from disclosing. These terms are also of the BC equivalent of the
OS terms.

7c states that the government does not license what it doesn't have the
rights to license. Without this term they would still not be granting a
license to information they can't license.

7d is not an issue. There is no database directive in BC and otherwise the
term is the same as the OS term

10 is the same as the OS term.

Given that the OS license is already acceptable I see no reason why this
license is also not acceptable.

[1]: http://www.data.gov.bc.ca/dbc/admin/terms.page
[2]:
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/docs/licences/os-opendata-licence.
pdf
[3]: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey_Opendata
[4]: FIPPA would override the license.