[OSM-legal-talk] Licensability of an employee's work

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 21.10.19 12:31, Edward Bainton wrote:
> If the employer is to give permission, do we have a way of capturing
> that somehow? Is there a repository of PDFd emails authorising such
> things, for example?

When employees are asked by their employer to contribute data to OSM in
the course of their employment, this is something we call "organised
editing" and we have some rules around that (see
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Organised_Editing_Guidelines).

One part of these guidelines is that there should be proper
documentation of the project (who's running it, what's the goal, who's
participating, etc.) on the OSM wiki.

This documentation would be the natural place to also upload any
statements made by the employer about permissions granted.

In my naive legal understanding I would say that if the employer asks
their employees to upload data to OSM, the employer has thereby
automatically granted the necessary permission, but it can never hurt to
have it in writing.

Best
Frederik

PS: I would strongly advise against using a "corporate account" that
groups the activities of many individuals as it makes communication
between the group/company members and other members difficult, and good
communication is a cornerstone of every successful organised editing
activity.

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