[OSM-legal-talk] Licensing question

Christoph Hormann chris_hormann at gmx.de
Fri Aug 2 17:34:18 UTC 2019


To avoid you drawing the wrong conclusions based on the (rather
abstract) explanations made by others - based on a quick look at the
documentation on

http://wiki.flightgear.org/Osm2city.py
https://osm2city.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

that tool seems mainly a geometry data conversion program for OSM data -
not unlike tools used routinely for cartographic applications like
osm2pgsql etc.  The output of this tool is in most cases likely a
derivative database or a collective database depending on how much
intermingling of OSM data with other data is happening.  If for example
extruded building geometries based on OSM polygons are textured with
texture images from other sources that is quite clearly a collective
database.  If you generate guessed building geometries based on non-OSM
landuse data as explained on:

https://osm2city.readthedocs.io/en/latest/how_it_works.html#chapter-howto-generate-would-be-buildings-label

(which is an interesting feature by the way) and combine this with OSM
based buildings that would be a derivative database.

For distinguishing between a produced work and a derivative database a
useful approach is to see if the way you use the data is more in a
database-like fashion or more in the form of a finished product ready
for human consumption.  The scene geometry for a 3d rendering is quite
clearly more database-like in its use.

--
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/



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