[OSM-talk] Let's talk Attribution

Kathleen Lu kathleen.lu at mapbox.com
Tue Apr 28 21:32:27 UTC 2020


> the header of the code, that's the place where the attribution is expected.
>
> roughly equivalent to some corner in the displayed map, that's what the
> license says, right?
>

I do not think these two things are at all equivalent. OSM is a database,
so the equivalent attribution notice to the header in code would be a text
file that accompanies the database. The UI of an application that uses a
database is the equivalent of the UI of an application that uses code.

the point which surprises me (and IIUC Skyler), is that you state
> something in the license, then you seem not to particularly care if it's
> respected, or not.
>

The FAQ is not the license. The license is the ODbL. The ODbL says
absolutely nothing about whether attribution should be on a map or not.
Read it here: https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/index.html
The FAQ is an interpretation of the ODbL that some people in the OSMF wrote
up many years ago, and some of that interpretation is from before the
license change. It is not clear that everything in the FAQ is a correct
interpretation of the ODbL. Regarding issues other than attribution, the
OSMF has updated it's license interpretations several times over the years.
It has been debated, but not decided, whether the FAQ interpretations on
attribution should be updated.
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