[OSM-talk] BSD/CC-by/LGPL vs. SharedAlike - decide now and forever

Daniel Haran chebuctonian at gmail.com
Tue Mar 21 13:07:33 GMT 2006


GPL, LGPL and BSD licenses are for software, not necessarily
appropriate for geodata.

My big concern is how you define derived work. Immanuel, since you're
so adamant, please take a stab at the following scenarios: (and anyone
else that feels strongly about it)

If I buy a license to the government's census data, can I make a map
with that data and OSM's? What's the status of my work?

Can I use the data in a proprietary mapping application if I make the
data I add publicly available, or do I also have to open up my
software?

Can I just create a map with OSM data, but keep rights over my
artistic rendition?

If I add information to the OSM data and overlay it with my points of
interest database, what do I have to contribute back? The map, the
POIs, or just what I added to my OSM data set? (The POIs do not seem
consistent with the rest of the data structure in OSM)

Whatever license we end up with, derived work has to be nailed down. I
believe nothing will hamper adoption more than uncertainty over that
issue.

Cheers,

Daniel

On 3/21/06, Rev Simon Rumble <simon at rumble.net> wrote:
>
> On 21/3/2006, "Colin Mackay" <colin.mackay at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I've gone through a number of use cases in my head. The problematic ones
> >that I see involve companies that want to publish in-house maps containing
> >commercially sensitive data on top of the map base. Or companies that want
> >to publish (again in-house) maps also containing data that is restricted
> >under the 1998 Data Protection Act (and I'm sure many other countries have
> >similar legislation).
>
> The GPL only applies the modification criteria when the software (it's a
> sw license) is released.  In-house is fine, though there is no
> definition of "distribute" so it might be dicey.
>
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