[Osmf-talk] Regarding tile licensing

[Donal Hunt]

I tend to leave these discussions to lawyers... Since licensing tends to
get very technical very quickly.

Saying that, I just worked on a project where we used OpenStreetMap data
for a map project in Cork, Ireland and as per the wiki we provided the
following credit:

Base map data: © OpenStreetMap contributors. Original data is available
under the Open Database License at openstreetmap.org.

In this case we exported OpenStreetMap data in geojson format using
overpass-turbo, generated SVGs and then added additional styling c/o a
graphic designer. I do not believe the final product has been licensed
under a specific license but we specifically credited the contributors and
avoided datasets / data sources that had commercial licenses attached.

My layman's understanding is that the final product could be copyrighted by
the creators while respecting the rights of the source information.

If you need a test case to debate it, then this is probably a good one
because I'm unlikely to be the first to do this. And yes, it's not tiles
per say but if you give my five mins I'll cut the map until 4 and serve the
4 pieces as tiles... ;)

Regards

Donal

On Tue, 18 Jun 2019, 21:27 Christoph Hormann via osmf-talk, <
osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org> wrote:

> On Tuesday 18 June 2019, Simon Poole wrote:
> >
> > So you are suggesting that we should license on terms that the ODbL
> > itself does not require. It doesn't really compute that the OSMF
> > should be held to a different norm in that respect than anybody else.
>
> No, i just explained why i think the problems of using CC-BY for
> licensing tiles do not equally apply with the currently chosen
> CC-BY-SA.
>
> > As said, per definition a Produced Work is not a database and doesn't
> > "contain data", if the work in question is a database then it is
> > licensed on ODbL terms (see the Produced Work guideline for our
> > position on this).
>
> But as a user of CC-BY licensed map tiles i don't care (and don't need
> to care) what the ODbL says.
>
> And frankly that the wording of the ODbL can define away the fact that a
> produced work can contain and normally contains semantic information
> from a database it is generated from seems a bit naive.  And it does
> not actually do that - as i read it the ODbL circumvents this problem
> by simply not defining what a Produced Work is in an immutable way.
>
> The solution IMO is quite simple - you can allow use of the tiles as a
> map rendering under CC-BY but mention that the rendering is produced
> from ODbL data (to say this is required by the ODbL attribution
> requirements anyway) and that therefore the information depicted in the
> tiles is - as a database - subject to the ODbL rules.
>
> If on the other hand you want to offer the tiles under terms where the
> user does not under any circumstances have to bother with the ODbL i
> think you have to choose or write a license that is compatible with the
> ODbL as a data license.
>
> > Assuming that
> >
> > a) the work in question (OSM data) is a database
> >
> > b) it is published in the EU or a territory that recognizes EU data
> > base rights and by virtue of that those rights are mutually
> > recognized (in any other situation we do not need to have this
> > argument), and we are considering reuse and distribution in the same
> > territories
> >
> > then according to Section 4 of CC BY 4.0 any database including the
> > work is Adapted Material and according to 2 a. 5. B. may only be
> > distributed on terms that do not  "restricts exercise of the Licensed
> > Rights by any recipient of the Licensed Material."* So while CC BY
> > 4.0 does not specify a required licence, you cannot restrict the use
> > of any database that includes such data more than what CC BY 4.0
> > requires (aka providing attribution).
>
> What you seem to be saying is that if i get a collection of map tiles
> from osm.org (presumed CC-BY for the sake of this argument), OCR the
> labels and detect and vectorize the buildings, fix a number of errors
> in the names, add some missing buildings, re-render my own map from
> them and publish that i have to allow others to use this map under
> terms no more restrictive than CC-BY.
>
> I doubt that because it would effectively defeat the whole purpose of
> CC-BY to not be a share-alike license.  But even if that was the case
> it would still not be functionally the same as the ODbL share-alike
> requirement because CC-BY quite definitely does not require me to
> publish intermediate data generated on the way to produce Adapted
> Material - which the ODbL however does.
>
> --
> Christoph Hormann
> http://www.imagico.de/
>
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> osmf-talk mailing list
> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
>
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