[OSM-legal-talk] SOTM-US geocoding/share-alike discussion

[Mikel Maron]

Hi

It's a pretty hilarious, sensationalizing series of posts. I do give him credit for getting deep into some of the issues and discussions of OSM, more than any other reporter I've seen. But I wouldn't take his zingers any more seriously than good lines at the US pres debates.

As for geocoding and ODbL, there is concern over how to interpret ODbL here, and I'm sure some use cases will come up for discussion soon. One option I've thought viable would be sharing of the selected strings used to geocode data, along with the lat/lng obtained from OSM and/or user input.

Btw, I was at SOTM-US, but didn't talk to Carl or take part in the ODbL-Geocoding BoF.

-Mikel
 
* Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron


>________________________________
> From: Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>
>To: Licensing and other legal discussions. <legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>; talk-us at openstreetmap.org 
>Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2012 4:58 AM
>Subject: [OSM-legal-talk] SOTM-US geocoding/share-alike discussion
> 
>Hi,
>
>   on talk-us there was a mention of Carl Frantzen's recent three-part
>article with SOTM-US coverage, http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/openstreetmap-part-1-new-cartographers.php,
>and his mention of "OSM moving away from his open-source roots".
>
>Apparently, this refers to some unfortunate statements at SOTM-US about
>share-alike being bad for business or something, and Frantzen mentions
>that a couple of businesses have set up an informal group to discuss
>which bits of our license they don't understand or want clarification
>on. As far as I know, nobody who knows anything about OSM seriously
>suggested that we "move away from open source", it was just a phrase
>unfortunately reported.
>
>I am still rather surprised to hear about this as a side note of SOTM-US
>coverage instead of here on this list where license discussions should
>be at home. I would urge anyone who is unclear about anything with ODbL
>and/or who believes that any community norms we have must be refined, to
>discuss that here on this mailing list - whether it's for business or
>personal use.
>
>Looking through past discussions in the archives of minutes of our
>Licensing Working Group, it seems clear to me that OSM data under ODbL
>is unlikely to ever be available for "no strings attached" geocoding; we
>won't ask for your customer database just because you geocode with OSM,
>but you will have to adhere to some rules nonetheless.
>
>LWG has never actually made a decision on geocoding, and all mentions in
>their minutes carry big disclaimers ("This is a summary of our
>discussion and should NOT be construed as a formal statement of
>position"). Under that disclaimer, the 20120515 minutes contain the
>following:
>
>> To be able to claim that the remainder of the record, (often
>> proprietary business information or personal information such as a
>> patient record) is not virally touched by geocoding against OSM ODbL
>> data needs a distinction to be demonstrated. This distinction needs
>> to be a clear and logical general rule or principle. It also needs to
>> be acceptable to the OSM community. At the moment, we feel this does
>> not exist.
>
>In the same notes there's a discussion of a "like with like" principle
>which means that "Whatever is used in the (reverse)geocoding look-up is
>virally touched, but nothing else."
>
>The 20120522 meeting notes contain a link to a concept paper
>
>https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Ag81OlT1TtnhYwVE-bBtL018SNoU_V-anG4wLdwMT4c
>
>and explicitly say: "To improve it, and test the rationality of the
>ideas expressed, we need and welcome real-world cases of geocoding and
>reverse-geocoding."
>
>So I guess anyone who wants to use OSM in a geocoding scenario should
>read that and submit their opinion, here or to LWG.
>
>Personally, I've gone on record as an advocate of a non-share-alike (PD) license for OSM but the project as a whole has decided to have a share-alike license and I accept that; I don't think that "geocode as much as you want without sharing any data" is possible with the ODbL data set.
>
>Bye
>Frederik
>
>-- Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
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>
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