[OSM-talk] License plan

[Gustav Foseid]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 2:13 PM, OJ W <ojwlists at googlemail.com> wrote:

> except that the ODbL does represent a fundamental change in licensing
> of map images - previously they were sharealike, but with ODbL it will
> only require attribution?


That is hos the license is understood by most people, yes. Some questions on
the final wording are still outstanding, as you have probably seen.


> This could potentially alienate anyone who wonders why they are doing
> surveying for free so that cartographers can sell all-rights-reserved
> map images based on their data.
>

It could, potentially, even if I agree with Richard. I think it is important
to explain why this change is to the better in the majority of the cases.

It is no longer possible to make massive amendments to the OSM data set,
make a mp of this and not share the data. Previously, you had to share the
map image, including design elements like pictograms, but to get the updated
map data into the database again, someone would have to to georectification
of the map and trace the changes.

With the ODbL, the image of the map does not have to be free, but the data
have to be shared. This means that the design elements are proprietary, but
the data are easily available.

This also opens up uses where you can combine data sources with different
licenses. One example could be digital elevation models combined with data
from OSM, to make a good hiking map.

Two examples:

I want to make a map of Copenhagen, with some good beer pubs. I am a lousy
artist, and would like to grab some pictograms from istockphoto.com to make
a good looking map. This is not possible today, and the map will lack good
pictograms. I will also be adding some extra pubs and other information
which is not in the database today. If anyone want to add this extra
information to the database, so they will be available for other users, they
will have to do this manually and the project gains very little.

Cloudmade and Geofabrik have some nice looking stylesheets that I would like
to base the above map on. Even if the map tiles are available to me, they
are little of no use to me. I will need to customize some things, like
rendering of pubs and restaurants, and cannot use the tiles directly. The
share alike properties of these images is not worth very much to me.


I think the bottom line here, is that the _data_ are very much more valuable
than any image made with them.

 - Gustav
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