[OSM-talk] Getting co-ordinates from OSM (was Re: Prolification of the amenity tag)

[Richard Fairhurst]

Something Bart just wrote reminded me of a question I had...

> Contrast with having that data in yellowiki. You'd just search for
> "butcher halal london" and there you go. Combine with a mashup with
> Openstreetmap (seems someone already did the work, the link has been
> quoted in this thread) and everything is already working _right now_
> and much quicker and easier!

I guess this shows that people are eventually going to be finding  
co-ordinates of particular places by clicking on an OSM map, just like  
they currently do on Google Maps/Multimap/whatever. Some people use  
this to create mashups, others to create static lists (like  
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_geographic_maps ).

We've had some debate in the past about whether doing this on a Google  
Map creates the dreaded derived work. Some of us think it does, some  
don't (the "you can't copyright facts" argument), but OSM's  
better-safe-than-sorry policy means we don't accept such data into our  
own db.

The question is, what's our take on this when other people start doing  
it on our maps?

Do we say:

a) you've created a derived work, so we want what you've done to be  
compatible with CC-BY-SA (may potentially exclude Wikipedia, say)

b) unless you start trying to recreate a map, we don't think you've  
created a derived work, so we're cool with what you're doing

or
c) well, you might have created a derived work, but we give you the  
additional right (over and above CC-BY-SA) to use these co-ordinates  
however you like, because we're nice like that

I'm kind of more interested in what OSM users would _like_ to do  
rather than what the existing words say we can do.

cheers
Richard

(Yeah, and sorry for another licensing question, I try to restrict  
them to one a month. :) )