[OSM-talk] License plan

OJ W ojwlists at googlemail.com
Tue Mar 3 22:14:07 GMT 2009


On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 9:40 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> The cartographer goes off on a tangent; he does not help us in reaching the
> goal of a free world map; he is a *user* of the free world map and not a
> *creator*. It is nice if he makes his work available because it allows us to
> show off what can be done with our data (although if he at least attributes
> us that's also a good thing). But him releasing his work does not contribute
> to the free world map; or, turned the other way round, him keeping his work
> for himself does not slow us down in any way (because what would we do with
> his painted maps? trace our data off them?).

what would we do with the cartographer's map images?  (other than
print them to navigate with or, put them in an encyclopedia, seems
reasonable after *we* mapped the area...)

the obvious one is: we would use them in software

currently, there are many different slippy-maps showing different
renderings of OSM data.  They are all technically compatible (due to
the tilenames) and they are all legally compatible (due to the CC-SA
license on images).  An application can swap between any of the maps
(and cache or distribute copies as they please) just by changing a
URL.

As with many other open standards, this leads to a wealth of
innovation in the devices, websites, applications and products which
use these mapservers (e.g. tangoGPS, the iphone app, the mediawiki
plugin, the variety of OSM website designs)

If anyone who converts map data into a map image is provided with
WTFYW license and gets to choose who is permitted to use, view,
modify, overlay, and copy their images then lots of websites might
decide "I paid for hosting and rendering, so only people who agree to
these conditions can use my maps", leading to a fragmentation of
licenses for the various slippy maps available.

Do we want to see the slippy-map tileservers becoming a commercial
battleground for who can make the most money while imposing the most
restrictions, where currently it's a nice easy "everything is
CC-BY-SA" level playing-field where tangogps doesn't have to worry
about enforcing the terms and conditions of 20 different rendererers?




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