[OSM-legal-talk] use of maptiles

[Richard Weait]

On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 3:47 AM, Schröders, Alexander
<Alexander.Schroeders at sensis-gmbh.de> wrote:

> Now i ask my self the question what is heavy use of tile materials.

Dear Alexander,

The dividing line between "not-heavy" and "heavy" is unlikely to be
defined for you.  This is deliberate and for the protection of the
OpenStreetMap project and the OpenStreetMap Foundation.  OpenStreetMap
Foundation resources are entirely run by volunteers and funded by
donations.  Those resources are limited and are not to be monopolized
by one or more commercial users.

Your donations to support the ever increasing demand on OpenStreetMap
Foundation infrastructure are appreciated.  See this site to donate
now.

http://donate.openstreetmap.org/

If you are using OpenStreetMap Foundation servers for commercial
purposes, you should change to either a third-party tile source, or to
self-hosting as soon as possible.  Do that for the happiness of your
clients and for the health of your company.  There are no guarantees
that OpenStreetMap Foundation servers or services will be available at
any particular time.  Services may be removed, altered or restarted
without notice.[1]

As a very rough guideline, use OpenStreetMap Foundation servers for
development, testing, internal use or experimentation, and for very
small projects that will never have a large audience.

If you plan to be successful, self host, or find a commercial source for tiles.

If you are staking your reputation on it, self host, or find a
commercial source for tiles.

If you want to go viral and / or have many users, self host or find a
commercial source for tiles.

Best regards and happy mapping,
Richard

[1] the hard working volunteer admin team do the best they can to
schedule and announce service issues.  But things can happen.