[Osmf-talk] Question about permission to use OpenStreetMap name

Simon Poole simon at poole.ch
Wed Sep 4 11:55:55 UTC 2019


I believe 3., 4. and 5. are clear enough on what permitted and
not-permitted use of the marks are.

From the allowed uses without a specific licence only 3.1 actually
refers to community members, and if HOT, Amazon, FB or whoever wants to
organize an OSM centric event I see no reason for them not to be able to
use the marks to promote the event.

Yes, there is an issue with the narrative about OSM being hijacked, but
this is a PR and marketing issue (and mainly caused by the OSMF itself),
not a legal one, not even one that could be fixed with legal means if we
wanted to.

Simon

Am 04.09.2019 um 11:33 schrieb Martin Koppenhoefer:
> Am Mi., 4. Sept. 2019 um 10:08 Uhr schrieb Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch
> <mailto:simon at poole.ch>>:
>
>     We've had a number that when pointed to the policy have not
>     applied (which is what one would expect), iirc we haven't had
>     somebody apply and formally not be granted permission.
>
>     But all that is not very surprising, as with the notable
>     exceptions of domain names and events (aka SotM), most common
>     community use of the marks is already covered and allowed by the
>     terms in the policy and there is no need to apply formally. As it
>     should be.
>
>
>
> Simon, thank you for the clarification. If I understand the policy
> correctly, everybody "who contributes to an OSM project in order to
> support OpenStreetMap’s mission." is considered a community member. I
> could not find a definition for "OSM project", but looking at the
> wording, it seems there are several of them (i.e. this is not "the one
> and only OSM project", but one of several OSM projects), can someone
> please explain how this is intended to be read? For example are the
> Apple OSM team, or the Facebook OSM team, or Amazon's OSM team (names
> of these groups are "made up" by me and not to be taken literally)
> considered "community members"?
>
> There could also be other cases, which once have started as a
> community effort, but with the time have detached more and more from
> the OSM community and could now be considered a closed group
> disconnected from the OSM community.
>
> I am also not sure how to interpret the term "contribute ... in order
> to support OSM's mission". Is using OSM data and attributing it to
> OSM, already "contributing in order to support the OSM mission" (if a
> prominent user does it, e.g. a media outlet, I would say yes), maybe
> the case of only using the data could still be debatable, but for
> sure, if they would be adding data, a contribution could not be
> denied? So it may be hard for anybody to qualify as an "unrelated
> organization or individual", because as soon as you make an edit you
> (and your organization) are forever a community member? Am I
> misreading this?
>
> Cheers,
> Martin
>
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