[OSM-legal-talk] Clarifying Geocoding and ODbL
Olov McKie
olov at mckie.se
Fri Jun 14 10:04:48 UTC 2013
First a small disclaimer:
We have changed our license to ODbL, In order to make the license change possible a reduction bot removed all contributions from someone not willing to change the license (a decliner). In order to be absolutely sure what the bot did we need the following:
1. The source code of the reduction bot.
2. A human readable list of the final rules the reduction bot is based upon, preferably with references to relevant sections of the bots source code.
3. A complete set of the OSM data directly before the reduction was run.
4. A complete set of the OSM data directly after the reduction was run.
I have not been able to find 1 and 2, and I have not acquired 3 and 4, so all I say about the reduction bot below is based upon the information I have been able to find and might there for contain errors, but to the best of my knowledge it is correct.
Also I am not a lawyer.
The set of rules that the redaction bot followed, to enable the license change, is by the bots work now coded into the history of our database in such a way that changing these rules would force us to revert the entire license change. I would suspect that if a license dispute about OSM ever end up in court, we will not be able to argue for more copyright protection than what we gave to those contributors who did not want the license to change. I would also like to argue that, when a question comes in if a user can or can not do something without breaching our copyright, we should always start the discussion by looking for similar examples in our own change to the ODbL.
As far as I understand our license change, it can be described[1] as this:
All objects that had an edit history where someone not willing to change the license (a decliner) had edited anything was reverted back in history until no edits by any decliner where left, thereby creating a clean database. All cleaning operations where based on the specific objects history in the database.
This could also be described as:
A user has full copyright to any point they add to the map regardless of surrounding data.
>Robert Whittaker Thu Jun 13 15:45:25 UTC 2013:
>I don't see any reason for the share-alike provisions not to apply. You are making use of
>contributors' works to derive some additional data. The whole point of
>having a share-alike license is to ensure that such derivatives are
>shared back with the community.
and
>Michal Palenik Fri Jun 14 06:09:38 UTC 2013:
>as was pointed out before, these implications are wrong:
>after adding a poi based on underlaying map data, i do not have full
>copyright because it is partially based on underlaying map (if i added
>it solely based on GPS coordinates, without any use of map, it would be
>a different story)
I said:
>Geocoding and license implications
>Manual geocoding of an entity that a person has prior local knowledge of, is the same process
>as adding a new entity to the OSM, and as such the person geocoding the entity retains their
>full copyright over the geocoded entity.
I separated the manual from the automatic geocoding, because I think they are different and so that we might treat them differently. I kept Alex Barths suggestion about the automatic geocoding as I think it might work, but I am sure he can explain his reasoning a lot better than I ever could.
I hope the explanation above about the reduction bot, explains how I arrived at my statement about manual geocoding, and why it MUST be this way. If you start claiming that adding a poi is "making use of contributors' works" and "partially based on the underlaying map", you are actually saying that our map is not clean and the change to ODbL must be reverted. I believe our map is in a clean state[1] and that it is mapped from good sources, such as "Local knowledge" that the "Beginners Guide"[2] describes.
/Olov
[1]
The best most comprehensive source I have found, is "What is clean? in the wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/What_is_clean%3F
[2]
The Beginners Guide
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners_Guide_1.1
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