[OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL

[James Livingston]

On 01/11/12 04:20, James Livingston wrote:
>> Turning it the another way, say you had OSM data and another database, which you had separately rendered to images. I'm pretty sure that you could then overlay one image on
>> another and serve the combined one to people (provided you satisfy the attribution requirements for the OSM data). If on the other hand you combined the two databases and
>> then rendered the images, you would have a Derived Database you need to release.
>
> That depends on the way you did the combination. If the second data set remained independent of the OSM data then you would have a Collective, not Derivative Database.

That's what I'm getting at - we're saying you need to provide the
data/method if you create a derivative database but not if you create
a collective database, but it's often not clear which it is.

As someone who received the end Produced Work, it may not be be
obvious whether you should demand the data/method, and very difficult
to be certain they should.

As the producer, you may not be sure either. If you are using
closed-source software where you can't see the internals, or if it's
open-source but you don't understand the internals, you may not be
able to tell. From the point of view of someone using it, it may
simply be a magic box which accepts two sets of data and emits some
images, and you have no idea how it combines them internally.



>> How is anyone else supposed to tell the difference? If they ask you to release the combined database and you replied "They were rendered separately and then combined, I don't have to release it", is there anything to do?
>
> That's a question of license enforcement, isn't it? I don't have an answer, but in the case where people are going to break the license and lie about doing so, it probably doesn't matter what the license says.