[Talk-GB] Use of OS OpenData in OSM

80n 80n80n at gmail.com
Tue Jul 20 16:39:58 BST 2010


On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Robert Whittaker (OSM) <
robert.whittaker+osm at gmail.com <robert.whittaker%2Bosm at gmail.com>> wrote:

> Emilie Laffray <emilie.laffray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The second point is that I don't see the relation between knowing how
> much
> > OS OpenData and the switch to the new licence. Talks of losing data is
> > partially a self fulfilling prophecy. It is impossible right now to gauge
> > how much data IF ANY we would lose since we don't have any means to know
> who
> > is in support of what until the voluntary licence is put in place.
>
> The last I heard (albeit informally) from OS is that they're worried
> about the lack of formal attribution requirements on Produced Works
> under ODbL. It's also unclear whether they would agree to DbCL for
> individual data items. From the first point alone, I don't think it's
> safe to conclude that their current license would allow their data to
> be used in an ODbL database, although I'd be hopeful that they could
> be persuaded to agree to a license that allows this.
>
> More importantly though, the current contributor terms [1] (in
> particular clauses 2 and 3) require mappers to grant certain rights to
> their data to OSMF, which in particular would allow OSMF to re-license
> the data without the Share-Alike or Attribution requirements if that's
> what the community voted for. I can't see OS ever agreeing to this, as
> it would mean they could loose their attribution requirements.
>
> So, unless those contributor terms are amended / removed, or there's
> an exception for certain data providers, we will have to loose any OS
> OpenData derived information from the database, by either deleting
> objects or reverting them to a prior state. Until this issue is
> resolved, I'd suggest not investing any time in adding anything
> further derived from OS OpenData.
>
> (Personally, I think those clauses in the contributor terms need to be
> removed entirely, as (a) it's unreasonable to expect people to agree
> to the use of their data under an as-yet-unspecified license, and (b)
> the terms provide a loop-hole that would prevent us from benefiting
> from the Share-Alike provisions of ODbL -- A third-party can take our
> data, do some cool stuff with it, add some of their own data, and
> release the result under ODbL to fulfil their SA responsibilities.
> There's nothing to force them to agree to our contributor terms, and
> by not doing so, they'd prevent OSM from using their combined dataset.
> This renders the SA provisions all but useless for us.)
>
> What's more, because Produced Works can be published under a restrictive
license we couldn't get the additional data back by tracing either.  ODbL +
CT makes getting data back into OSM much harder than it is now by a massive
degree.

BTW, how would a corporation agree to the Contributor Terms anyway?  The
sign-up page only caters for individuals.  Has, for example, CloudMade,
agreed to the contributor terms yet and how could we tell if they had?

80n
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