[OSM-legal-talk] use OSM data to select proprietary data

[Christoph Hormann]

On Saturday 14 December 2019, matthias.straetling at buerotiger.de wrote:
> > existing OSMF community guidelines suggest spatial operations like
> > ST_Difference() and ST_Intersection() yield Derivative Databases
> > that are subject to share-alike.
>
> Let's take the Collective Database Guideline, you've mentioned:
> https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidelines/Coll
>ective_Database_Guideline_Guideline
>
> "Technically a reference between non-OSM and OSM data can be by a
> database key or any other method of identifying a specific OSM or
> non-OSM element that may be used with a database join."
>
> So actually, I just need to create a collective database, put the
> non-free data in one table and OSM data in another. For table
> joining, I'm using ST_Intersects() and I'm fine?

No, the quoted guideline says that share-alike does not apply if OSM
data and non-OSM data *do not* reference each other and in specific
other cases.  None of these cases covers references through spatial
relationships.

The idea that your process of intersecting non-OSM data with OSM based
admin polygons results in a collective database is not realistic.  To
me this kind of operation would be a textbook example of something
generating a derivative database - you combine OSM data with non-OSM
data to generate something of additional value compared to either of
these data sets alone.  This is exactly the kind of scenario
share-alike is meant for and why it was chosen as license for OSM.  But
there are of course fairly strong economic interests for this not being
subject to share-alike so people think of ways to interpret the ODbL
accordingly.

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