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

Robert Whittaker (OSM) robert.whittaker+osm at gmail.com
Mon Oct 22 09:41:07 BST 2012


I have a question concerning the ability of someone creating produced
works from an ODbL-licensed database to license that produced work for
use by others. Strictly speaking it's a question about the ODbL,
rather that OSM, but since it will have a significant effect on OSM
users, I thought I would try asking here. For reference, the ODbL
license text can be found at
http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/

I understand that if someone creates and then "publicly uses" a
produced work from an ODbL-licensed database then they are required to
add some text to the produced work saying that it came from such a
database
(ODbL 4.3), ensure that any derivative database created along the way
are under a suitable license (ODbL 4.4) and also meet the requirements
for providing the final database or algorithm used to produce
it (ODbL 4.6).

That's all fine. My question is: how can that produced work then be
licensed to others? Are there any restrictions placed on what license
someone could offer the produced work under? Do they have to ensure
that other users and creators of derivative works maintain the
attribution back to the original ODbL database? Or could they offer
the work under something like the CC0 license? Do they have to
share-alike
the produced work? Or can they keep it "all rights reserved"?

This would seem to be quite an important question for OSM data users
who are producing map tiles, and I can't see anything to specifically
address this in the ODbL itself. Except perhaps in clause 4.3, which
could be
taken as a viral attribution requirement on any re-uses of the
produced work. However, 4.3 only refers to the produced work itself,
and not any derivative works arising from it.

My understanding is that you don't have to share-alike produced works
and can keep them "all rights reserved" if you want (though the other
requirements listed above may mean that others could replicate your
work quite easily, so it may not be that effective to do so). I also
don't think there's anything to stop people CC0-ing produced works,
but I'm not as confident on this point. So I'd appreciate any
clarification and/or reasoning that anyone can give.

Many thanks,

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker



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