[OSM-talk] OSM layer into Adobe Illustrator?

[Barnett, Phillip]

Um, I wasn't really looking for authoritative legal advice, so sorry if
I gave that impression. I just wanted a quick yes/no as to what I could
do with OSM data which I naively assumed was somewhat along the lines of
'credit the organisation from whence the data was derived, and let
others copy any modifications or derivations you make'
If I'd got that broadly right, then I would have passed it on to our
lawyers, as you suggest. But I'm an engineer, it's not my department,
not my problem, and I'm NOT going to bother expensive lawyers over
something I was just trying to promote internally if I thought it was
not remotely possible. I just wanted a sanity check.

I understand the GPL, and could roughly summarise that in three
sentences if anyone ever asked me advice as to whether it was suitable
for their use - in the same way I just wanted an indication as to
whether I should bother proceeding, or not. 

IANAL is an acronym I do recognise ....

As it is, I no longer care, so we can just drop this whole discussion,
which was dead in the water last week, and only resurrected by Lars
today, now, please? 


Regards

Phillip


 
 



PHILLIP BARNETT
SERVER MANAGER

200 GRAY'S INN ROAD
LONDON
WC1X 8XZ
UNITED KINGDOM
T +44 (0)20 7430 4474
F 
E PHILLIP.BARNETT at ITN.CO.UK
WWW.ITN.CO.UK

-----Original Message-----

From: Roozbeh Pournader [mailto:roozbeh at gmail.com] 
Sent: 26 February 2007 14:33
To: Barnett, Phillip
Cc: Richard Fairhurst; talk at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] OSM layer into Adobe Illustrator?

On 2/26/07, Barnett, Phillip <Phillip.Barnett at itn.co.uk> wrote:
> I wasn't asking OSM to CHANGE their license. I know we have a license 
> - my complaints were that nobody could clarify for me exactly what it 
> meant in practise, so I ended up not being able to use it for fear of 
> transgressing the license (in particular, the suggestion by various 
> people that I needed to credit _individual_ contributors - which I had

> no way of contacting)

Please!

A project like OSM cannot give you legal advice (for gratis or not).
OSM's data has a license which tells about all these things, and you
know where can the exact text be found. You should not have contacted
the "talk" mailing list of such a project for such licensing info.
Instead, you should have talked to your own organization's lawyer about
using material available under a public license (CC-BY-SA, in this
case).

I know several organizations that use or extend free software/open
source software in various ways. They don't contact the original authors
of the software each time they want to use it for whatever.
Instead, they check the license the authors have specified, see if it
suits them fine. They will then contact the authors if they still wish
to use the software but the license is not good for them. And guess
what, the authors rarely grant such a license. They usually say sorry,
either follow the license or use something else. Do they provide legal
advice? Rarely. Do they go over your exact usage scenario and tell if
they think you are following their license properly? Rarely.

If you want to know what a license means exaclty, contact a lawyer who
knows about licenses and can interpret it for you. It's as simple as
that!

Good luck,
Roozbeh
Please Note:

 

Any views or opinions are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent 
those of Independent Television News Limited unless specifically stated. 
This email and any files attached are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual
or entity to which they are addressed. 
If you have received this email in error, please notify postmaster at itn.co.uk 

Please note that to ensure regulatory compliance and for the protection of our clients and business,
we may monitor and read messages sent to and from our systems.

Thank You.