[OSM-talk] Yahoo Aerial Imagery vs. OSM Spirit

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

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Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>     I've been thinking about the Yahoo! issue (how they do not want  
> us to use their imagery with JOSM).

That's probably a misrepresentation. They don't like the mechanism used
by the current YWMS plugin because they believe it sets a bad precedent
that pushes at the edges of their acceptable use policy.

> I recently asked on legal-talk whether they believed I could use  
> available non-free aerial imagery to give examples in a "how to map  
> complex junctions" documentation. Ine answer I received was: Even if  
> you legally could, you shouldn't do it, as this would be against our  
> spirit, because the imagery in question is not free.

What you can put on the wiki isn't really relevant.

> I see a similar argument looming with Yahoo aerial imagery. Their  
> data is very valuable to us, but it is not free. They give us  
> permission to use the data, but that permission has a lot of strings  
> attached about the way we may or may not use the data, and we do not  
> have anything in written that tells us exactly what the limits are.  

If you don't want to use the imagery, don't. In the same way that if you
 don't want to use a Garmin E-Trex GPS because it doesn't run free
software, you don't have to. You can still use npemap or Landsat, or
your own linux based open source GPS tracking tool.

That doesn't mean you should seek to stop others using the Yahoo images,
just as Linus wouldn't complain if I used MS Visual Studio to edit the
kernel, and sent him a patch that I wrote using it - he'd just accept or
reject the patch on it's merits.

Would you tell me not to contribute to OSM if I bought some aerial
photos on a license that said only I could see them, but I could derive
data from them?

Robert (Jamie) Munro
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