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

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 09/24/2015 06:52 PM, Stephan Knauss wrote:
> If a printed map is a database

A printed map is not a database for us; the German court opinion you
quote has been mentioned in the run-up to the license change but it
didn't convince us.

A database has to consist of things "arranged in a systematic or
methodical way and individually accessible by electronic or other
means". While it is obviously possible for a court to stretch this
definition to printed maps, most people find the idea absurd.

> (refer to Landgericht München I, 21 O
> 14294/00) and we treat it as a produced work, why can't another database
> not be a produced work as well? For example a database used for routing
> or a database used for (reverse)geocoding.

A database that you create by repeatedly extracting snippets of
information from OSM - the results of your geocoding query - is
*clearly* a database according to the "arranged in a systematic or
methodical way..." definition.

Your logic seems to be that essentially because a court somewhere has
once said that 1 = 0 in some cases, anything goes!

> I'm out from this legal discussion. And I recommend all not having any
> degree of legals and experience with database right also not to
> participate in this discussion any more. It's all opinions. But for
> legal discussions opinions don't count much (maybe unless you are the
> judge).

I don't think that we should switch off our rational thinking just
because there are people with a law degree.

But you are right in that this discussion goes much too far into the
"what would a lawyer say" direction. We don't need that - the subject is
quite appropriately "When *should* ODbL apply to Geocoding". If we as a
project find an answer to that, then we can let lawyers fix (or
interpret) the license so that it delivers what we want.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"