[OSM-legal-talk] When should ODbL apply to geocoding

Randy Meech randy.meech at gmail.com
Wed Sep 23 17:18:52 UTC 2015


On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 2:01 AM Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 09/23/2015 04:49 AM, Randy Meech wrote:
> > I used the MapQuest Nominatim
> > service to geocode and/or reverse geocode all the global tide stations
> > used in the app. What would the community have me do?
>
> As a step one, and before we discuss the potential licensing
> consequences, would you agree that
>
> 1. What you have created to power your app is a database.
>

Yes


> 2. The database you have created is partly derived from a non-OSM source
> (as far as the "there is a tide station at this address" is concerned).
>

Yes, most of the data is from non-OSM sources. Just the results of reverse
geocodes are from Nominatim/OSM.


> 3. The database you have created is partly derived from OSM (as far as
> "this address is at location lon=x, lat=y" is concerned).
>

Actually I mis-spoke a bit (sorry, it was several years ago). The lat/lngs
are actually from state agencies, although I did reverse geocoding with
Nominatim and store the results in the database.


> Is there any doubt about any of these three statements either on your
> side or anyone else's?
>

So again, I don't really care about publishing this under ODbL, but to
argue the point, I'm not sure I agree with the third statement. If I had
taken raw OSM data and derived something from it, I would agree with this.
But -- to Alex's overall point -- the geocoding results seem like a
produced work to me. I believe that I am decorating other open data with
the results of a geocoder that contains sufficient art to make it not
derived, but produced.

Curious about others' thoughts here -- I do think this is an important
topic to figure out and I'm happy to be a guinea pig for this.

-Randy
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