[OSM-talk] Terms of use for OSM tiles and API?

[Frankie Roberto]

Hi,

This is related to a question in the Flickr thread about whether OSM should
provide services as well as data, and is something I've been meaning to ask
for a while:

Are there any "terms of use" for either the XML API or the Mapnik/Osmarender
map tiles?

eg if someone wants to embed the our Mapnik tiles on their website (eg using
OpenLayers), can they do so? Does it depend on commercial/non-commercial?
Bandwidth required?

The 'export' tab on the map gives you some iframe html which allows you to
embeds the mapnik tiles (via the embed.html page), so I'm presuming that
this kind of usage is encouraged, but nowhere (that I've found) does it
explicitly state how you can use this. Presumably, if someone like Google or
Wikipedia started embedding our map tiles, our servers would get enough of a
hammering that we'd ask them to stop (hence Wikipedia wanting to host their
own tiles)?

Personally, I think that providing a reliable tile server (containing a well
designed map for good all-round use) that anyone can use, so long as they
give appropriate attribution, is something OSM should support and promote -
even if other commercial and non-commercial services (Cloudmade, etc) are
available. It's also something we already seem to do a good job at.

However I don't know whether this crosses some major ideological division
within the community??

Either way, could we at least try to make some form of 'terms of use' for
the API and map tiles available?

Frankie


-- 
Frankie Roberto
Experience Designer, Rattle
0114 2706977
http://www.rattlecentral.com
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