[OSM-legal-talk] Attribution/Licensing for map derived from Standard OSM TIles

Peter Cooper Jr. pete-openstreetmap-legal-talk-list at cooperjr.name
Tue Jan 5 16:36:32 UTC 2021


Thank you. Maybe I'm just being too picky and not really understanding 
the freedom that OSM gives, but with regards to the license I put my own 
"Produced Work" under (assuming that's the term for this taking of the 
default tiles and then modifying them, or even if I just use Maperative 
or QGIS to build a map based on the OSM data): As there's an attribution 
requirement I don't think I can just put it into the public domain, 
right? Does that mean that I need to either use something like CC-BY or 
put together my own statement (my own license?) about how one can reuse 
my image as long as credit is still given to the OpenStreetMap project? 
Or can I put the image itself under CC0 and yet still make it clear (by 
that link to the OSM copyright page) that attribution is still required 
since that's a requirement of the underlying data rather than the image 
itself?

If you can't tell, this is making my head spin, and perhaps I'm just 
overcomplicating things as I am wont to do.

Thanks,
Peter

On 1/4/2021 2:19 PM, Kathleen Lu via legal-talk wrote:
> 1) That text is fine. Please link to https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
> 2) It sounds like all you did was personal styling, as your actual
> improvements to the area were made in iD, so I would say no, it's not
> a Derivative Database and there's no share-alike obligation.
>
> On Sat, Jan 2, 2021 at 6:54 PM Peter Cooper Jr. via legal-talk
> <legal-talk at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>> Hello! I tried asking my question on the Q&A Forum
>> <https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/78020/licensecrediting-my-edited-export-of-osm>
>> but didn't really get an answer in the past couple weeks, so I figured
>> I'd try here and maybe someone here can help me. I think that this
>> should be simple, but the more I read through the copyright pages the
>> more confused I get. It feels like how this all works should be obvious
>> to me but I'm just not understanding and want to make sure I'm doing
>> this right.
>>
>> I'm working on making a map for directions to my house. I went to
>> OpenStreetMap.org, went to an area containing my house and the major
>> roads around it, and exported a box of it to an SVG file using the
>> "Share" functionality. I then opened that SVG in Inkscape and made some
>> modifications, like removing things I didn't need and adding more
>> specific labeling around the important landmarks on the way to my house.
>> For the most part these landmarks (road names, that a building where one
>> turns is made of brick, etc.) are in the underlying data but weren't
>> visible on the map I exported. And then I added a marker indicating my
>> house.
>>
>> I want to post this edited SVG file on my web site alongside some
>> text-based directions I already have and wrote myself. While I can find
>> information on requirements if I use the underlying data myself to make
>> a map, or if I just present the standard tiles directly, I can't find
>> information on the case of starting with the standard tiles but then
>> modifying them.
>>
>> 1) What credit text do I need to put on (or next to) the map? Is it just
>> "Base map and data from OpenStreetMap and OpenStreetMap Foundation" like
>> if I was using the tiles directly, or do I need to make clearer somehow
>> which data is from OpenStreetMap and which edits I made?
>>
>> 2) Is there some license I need to publish this completed SVG file under
>> to comply with share-alike rules? I'm certainly fine with anyone using
>> the work I did, but I'm assuming (since I don't own all the data) I
>> can't just put the image into the public domain and be done with it? A
>> lot of the "derived database" stuff seems to assume you're doing
>> something more complicated than I am of just annotating the map image
>> which is part of what's confusing me.
>>
>> While I don't think it matters for my specific questions, before making
>> the export I have made some fixes to the area near my house in the
>> standard iD editor to make the map more complete and accurate near me.
>>
>> Thanks!
>> --
>> Peter



More information about the legal-talk mailing list