[OSM-talk] [OSM-legal-talk] I don't want companies stealing OSM data that I contribute!

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Emilie Laffray wrote:
> While I am not a legal expert, I will try to answer that one.
> Companies can already make money from OpenStreetMap: there are plenty of 
> examples around (Skobbler, Cloudmade, Geofabrik, etc....). There is 
> nothing preventing a company from using the data. However, they are 
> bound to make their data available.

People often claim that "I do not want somebody to make money from OSM 
and give nothing back."

I would like to point out that there are a number of perfectly legal 
ways, today, of making money from OSM and giving nothing back. A very 
simple example would be a large organisation with many sales 
representatives, where the organisation issues OSM maps to the sales 
reps instead of buying from Garmin. That can easily give them five-digit 
yearly savings, and nothing is "given back".

They can also start building something on top of OSM, e.g. add their own 
POIs to the map, or hack the TomTom map file format to be able to 
generate TomTom maps from OSM - all without "giving back".

You can, today, legally, couple OSM data with software you sell ("buy 
AutoNav 1.0 with free OSM data"). Of course the data can be copied under 
CC-BY-SA but why would anybody copy it since anyone who has the software 
to read it also has the data. Then you offer a data update, but sadly 
(due to added features) that update only works with AutoNav 1.1 which 
you have to buy for 5$ extra. Of course the update is free but...

And, of course, if you are in a country where CC-BY-SA doesn't work then 
you can just completely ignore CC-BY-SA and produce dreived works to 
your heart's content without giving anything to anybody.

Bye
Frederik