[OSM-talk-be] licence-agreement for using 3th party received information ???

[Ben Laenen]

Kristoff Bonne wrote:
> Ben,
> 
> 
> The ESRI-files I received as been converted to points and ways and have
> been uploaded directly to the OSM-server in that form.

About which municipality are we actually speaking btw? From which town did you 
get the data?


> But, concidering storing the original files in some central place, the
> issue is that I have a spoken agreement with the person who provided
> these files "for uploading them to the openstreetmap-project". I have
> never spoken to him about giving these files to other people or
> something like that.

But by uploading to OSM you're basically doing just that: giving it away to 
other people. Except that when you don't make the file itself available 
somewhere, some people may have a slightly harder time extracting the dataset 
from OSM again. But it's possible nonetheless, and he could then make an ESRI 
file again from that and distribute that under the CC license, and so we end 
up with the same file you started with, except a possible quality loss.

So I do not understand your point here. By giving it to OSM through you he 
basically said it's OK to distribute under OSM license. So you can make the 
file by itself available under the same license. It'll stay under the 
copyright of whatever organization made the ESRI file, but would just get a CC 
license stamp.

You just never know what will happen in future with the data, and we might 
need it again, and you may not be around then.


> That's exactly one of the reasons why I think some kinf of "written
> agreement" would not be a bad thing. At least, it provides clearity on
> who does what, what information is stored where, etc.
> 
> In the end, this is in the interest of everybody!

Well, it would look more formal, but in the end an OSM Belgium vzw wouldn't be 
more official than you as a private person. You could have signed a contract 
with him just as well if you want a written agreement to be sure no problems 
could arise in future. I don't think the envelope of a non-profit organization 
would mean its members aren't vulnerable to those claims.

Greetings
Ben