[Openstreetmap] Best way to licence data - CC or MIT/X11?
Matt Amos
matt at matt-amos.uklinux.net
Mon Feb 21 20:34:10 GMT 2005
On Monday 21 February 2005 18:23, Nick Whitelegg wrote:
> How does openstreetmap intend to licence its data? For my Freemap
> project, I was originally intending to licence the data (e.g. in
> XML form) using the Creative Commons licences but someone on the
> uk.comp.os.linux newsgroup pointed out that it would make the data
> incompatible with the GPL, and thus it would be impossible to
> include the data with a GPL application which made use of it.
we were thinking CC with SA clauses. as i understand it the data could
be distributed however you like, with GPL software or in a separate
"data" package.
a lot of this data is best served online and not distributed, as the
whole data set is likely to become very large in the future.
> So I'm thinking of the MIT or X11 licence (basically the same
> thing) which is a non-copyleft free software licence. This would
> allow the Freemap data itself to remain free but for commercial
> people to develop proprietary works based on it.
we'd like to ensure that derivatives of the mapping data are also
free, e.g: if someone adds wifi hotspot, traffic signage or other
meta-data they'd have to contribute that.
on the other hand, if someone wants to make print copies of the OSM
data or include it with a GPS unit then we're fine with that.
we could always dual-license CC+SA & GPL, which would be OK, as the
GPL is more restrictive than the CC+SA. this would solve the
packaging issue.
cya,
matt
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 190 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20050221/5566f6a2/attachment.pgp>
More information about the talk
mailing list