Open Database License

This page provides more details for the proposed new licence for OpenStreetMap project.

It provides a brief for the new licence, and compares the (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0) licence and the proposed new licence. The new licence is based on the (Open Data License and Factual Info licences).

CC-BY-SA and the ODL licence share the same basic tenets - open, share-alike (aka copyleft/viral), and attributed. This page simply focuses on the details of where they differ. It is very much a summary document and you are encouraged to read the licences themselves.

A brief for the proposed licence

The licence should:

1) Ensure that if changes are make to this dataset (to create a Derived Dataset) then this Derived Dataset should be also made available under this licence to the recipients of any end-user experience based on the Dataset. This Derived Dataset should keep any notices associated with the original Dataset in tact.

The notices associated for any Derived Dataset which includes data from OpenStreetMap should include one saying that this Database contains data from OSM and will also contain other notices in relation to bulk contributions, (such as the Canada data). When Derived Databases are produced then additional notices may be added associated with other data sources.

Any Derived Dataset should be made available to the recipients of the end-user experience in a suitable form and by a suitable method or means that would allow the data to be used by a competent person. This may be achieved by providing a suitable URL for to a location where the Derived Dataset is available or by providing the Derived Dataset within the end-user experience.

The Derived Dataset may contain all the relevant data or may only contain those elements that have changed from the original Dataset so long as access to the original Dataset is also available.

The recipient of a Derived Datatset is entitled to use it, or distribute it by any available means under the terms of this licence.

Reformating the data within the dataset by some automatic process, for example to compress, filter or index the dataset or convert it in a different format does not by itself constitute a Derived Dataset. Adding additional information or changing information to correct errors, to add detail or additional information to the Dataset does create a Derived Dataset[This point has not been agreed yet on legal-talk]

Private use of the Dataset does not require you to make any Derived Dataset available using this licence. The term 'Privately' includes "conveying the covered works to others for the sole purpose of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you with facilities for running those works, provided that you comply with the terms of this License in conveying all material for which you do not control copyright. Those thus making or running the covered works for you must do so exclusively on your behalf, under your direction and control, on terms that prohibit them from making any copies of your copyrighted material outside their relationship with you". For the avoidance of doubt, providing the work to a small and exclusive number of customers is not 'private use' and does require the release any Derived Database under the terms of this licence.

2) Ensure that when this Dataset is used in within a Collective Dataset then ensure that any changes made to the dataset are distributed under the terms of this licence and that the Collective Dataset shall be provided with at least as much protection as provided by this licence for the elements derived from the Dataset.

Collective Databases may be kept private or, can be distributed in an encrypted or access restricted format.

If a Collective Database contains data from this Dataset is released in open format where the contents can be re-used by others then the elements of the Collective Dataset that are the Derived Dataset shall be protected with at least as much protection as provided by this licence.

If changes are required to the Dataset prior to inclusion in a Collective Dataset then this may be considered a Derivative Dataset and should comply with the appropriate requirements within this licence for Derivative Datasets.

3) Ensure that if people use the dataset within any end user experience that they: a) attribute the contributors to the Dataset in the resulting work appropriately for the medium, the space available and the relative significance of the various element to their final work. b) licence the resulting work in any suitable way that protects the Dataset.

When the OSM database itself is used this will normally be a an acknowledgement to the project itself and the URL. The OSM project website will in turn list all contributors to OSM including the person who added single way.

In some cases, for example on a TV broadcast, the appropriate acknowledgement for the space, medium and significance of the map to the story might be ‘none’. For a film the appropriate acknowledgement might be in the credits at the end. For a map in a newsletter it might be a note at the bottom of the document that says ‘mapping data from www.OpenStreetMap.org

For Collective and Derivative Databases the acknowledgement may or may not mention OSM with consideration for the relative significance of the OSM data to the complete work.

Full attribution for the DataSet will however be available in the notices associated with the actual DB as per 1).

The resulting work can be licenced in any form (©, ccbysa etc) so long as the licencing protects the resulting work from being reverse engineered into a new DB without the resulting DB coming under 1).

4) Ensure that individual contributors to the OSM Dataset through the website (Potlatch, JOSM etc) agree to contribute information on suitable terms allowing their work to be incorporated into the OSM Dataset.

It should make clear that individual contributors will be acknowledged on the OSM website but not within the final end-used experience and distinguish them from 'Bulk Contributors' who can expect a notice to be included in the OSM database.

5) Clarify that the use of 'non-substantial' amounts of data come under 'fair-use' rules and, do not need to comply with any of the above and so can be incorporated into any other work without attribution or restriction.

Use Cases

Publishing a simple map in a book, newsletter or similar work

To include one of more raster maps in a printed publication.

Allowed: Yes

Requirement: Include the message 'data from www.openstreetmap.org' under the image or 'map data from www.openstreetmap.org' at the end of the publication. [is PD allowed? or only ccbysa or (c)]

Using a map derived from OSM data in a TV news piece about an event in a certain location

If the news story is not about OSM or mapping and the map is minor to the story and no attribution would be expected to a similar commercial map then no attribution would be required. [more here about web credits?]

Using OSM data in a computer game

In order to produce scenery for a simulation (I'm thinking specifically of flight simulation here, but other types of simulator would have similar requirements) you'd need to combine several data sets - at a minimum it'd be an aeronautical dataset providing airfield data, some sort of DEM (more likely SRTM based), and then land use, natural and man made features (hopefully OSM!). There may be additional data included on top of this (literally) on order to position models of objects in the environment.

--JonS 15:17, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The combination of the OSM Dataset with other datasets would constitute a Collective Dataset and would come under the Collective Database rules. The resulting scenery would be a 'end user experience' so could be copyright to the game maker. Any changes to the OSM dataset would need to be published as a Derivative Dataset.

Allowed: Yes

Requirement: To include an acknoweldgement to OSM for the appropriate parts in a similar location to where a commerical dataset would be acknowledged, probably on a credits page.

Providing an on-line slippery map service based on OSM data

add details here

Use of OSM data on a website

It should be made unambiguously clear that putting a map on a website does not mean any other part of the website should be affected by the share-alike.

Mobile Application

Attribution in a mobile (or any) application should be satisfiable by an about dialog or similar.

Creation of the DVD containing the Dataset

Makes a derived database and sends this to a DVD duplication service to make one million copies. This does not count as "publication" so the share-alike should not come into force (yet). It will come into force once the DVDs are publicly distributed but not as soon as the master DVD reaches the duplication facility.

Geotagged photos, blog posts and other entities

Someone uploads their photos to a photo-sharing service (e.g. Flickr) and then drags the photo to a location on a map. The owner of the photo wants to keep the copyright of the photo to himself, or to release it under one of the Creative Commons licenses.

A person writes a daily blog and wants to geotag the blog articles on a map. This data is written as plain numbers on the web page (perhaps with a link to a map: http://openstreetmap.org/?lat=60.15987&lon=24.94306&zoom=15&layers=B000FTF) and is included as metadata on the RSS feed of the blog. The blog writer prefers to keep the copyright of the blog to herself.

A microblogger, using something like Twitter or Jaiku, enters his address (City, Country, could be Street, City, Country) and the messages are mapped to the geocoded coordinates using OSM as a geocoder. Usually, the microblogger prefers to keep the copyright of the blog to himself. Again, license/attribution on microblog/RSS feed of it?

A wikipedian finds an interesting topic to write about, located in the northern Canada. He writes about it and then finds out the coordinates of the location using OSM. He then attaches the coordinates to the Wikipedia article. The person is required to be licensed the article under the GNU Free Documentation License. Here's an example, notice coordinates at the top of the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colville_Lake%2C_Northwest_Territories

Allowed: Yes

Requirement: None, it comes under fair-use when done in small amounts. Note: fair-use should not cover mass-usage or systematic scraping of the database.

Tracing areas and locations

Using OSM as a basis to trace locations and areas - similar to http://wikimapia.org/#lat=60.2261751&lon=24.9588776&z=11&l=0&m=a&v=2 - imagine OSM to be used instead of the Google satellite view.

Business cards on a web page

A corporation wants to publish a list of partners on a web page. The web page follows the latest trends and has been marked with a microformat, hCard. The hCard includes coordinates for addresses, derived from OSM. The coordinates are not visible on the web page, only machine readable in the microformat ( based on an example on http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-examples ):

<div class="vcard">
  <span class="fn n">
     <a class="url" href="http://t37.net">
       <span class="given-name">Fréderic</span> 
       <span class="family-name">de Villamil</span> 
     </a>
  </span>
  <span class="adr">
     <span class="street-address">12 rue Danton</span>
     <span class="locality">Le Kremlin-Bicetre</span>
     <span class="postal-code">94270</span>
     <span class="country-name">France</span>
  </span>
  <span class="geo">
     <abbr class="latitude" title="48.816667"></abbr>
     <abbr class="longitude" title="2.366667"></abbr>
  </span>
</div>

Attribution?

more?

add details here

"Black Hat" Use Cases

a.k.a. things we would like to avoid

Having to grant access to pgsql data base

In a scenario where someone downloads a planet file and converts it using osm2pgsql, then continues to apply daily or even minutely dumps; that person is creating a derived database. If he then makes public a work based on this database - like our Mapnik tiles! - a simple share-alike provision would force this person to make his database accessible to the public. This is not practical (we ourselves would have to permit anyone to log in to our psql database or provide an API to download stuff from there, or provide regular psql dumps).

Legal basis

Unlike CC-BY-SA, ODL-Database is expressly enforced through copyright, database right, and contract (2.1). This gives protection in those countries where copyright does not apply to data and databases.

To ensure that potential users are aware of and agree to the contract terms, we are proposing to require a click-through agreement before downloading data. (All registered users would agree to this on signing up so will not need a further click-through on each download.)

CC-BY-SA does not draw a distinction between the database and the data. The ODC licences recognise that the two are often treated differently from a legal standpoint, and so provide a companion licence (ODC-Factual) for the data itself. The two would be used jointly in OSM's case.

Why OSMF believes this change is necessary: It is vital that our licence has legal force, in case a company with clever lawyers finds a way to use our data without respecting the intent of the community. Several legal interpretations hold that a copyright-based licence such as CC-BY-SA does not apply to geodata. ODC-Database provides much more protection here.

Attribution

ODL-Database expressly requires that credit is only given to the database, i.e. OpenStreetMap (4.2/4.3). CC-BY-SA, as applied to OSM, is unclear as to whether attribution to every individual contributor is required.

ODL-Database does offer the possibility of adding other attribution where another substantial data source has been imported (typically not under ODL-Factual). For example, the Canadian Geobase licence requires attribution.

Why OSMF believes this change is necessary: There has been much confusion about attribution requirements and we believe it is possible that, under CC-BY-SA, individual contributors could insist on attribution. At present, we are not complying with this. ODL-Database resolves this while still offering a method to incorporate large attribution-required datasets.

Share-alike for data

When someone takes OSM data and adds their own data to it (forming a "derivative database"), this data has to be made available on the same terms (4.4, 4.4c) - even if their intention was to publish a map and not distribute the data.

This means, for example, that a commercial cartographer wanting to augment their own maps with OSM data would have to publish their own data openly, too.

CC-BY-SA requires that the finished product is made share-alike, but not the source data. Under CC-BY-SA, even if the commercial map was freely copiable, OSM would not get the source data to add to our own database.

OSMF is asking the licence authors to add a further provision to make it clear that the data has to be "contributed back" in this way.

Why OSMF believes this change is necessary: We expect use of OSM data to expand rapidly in the years to come. We want to encourage such use and, at the same time, to benefit from it by increasing our data.

Derived works

If you create a mashup, a video, or a map using OSM data, ODL-Database calls this an "integrated experience" (4.3). In this case, you do not have to share the other parts of the experience (such as the other layers on the mashup, or the artistic cartography). However, you still have to share the map data, as above.

CC-BY-SA requires that the entire "derivative work" is shared. In the past, interpretations of this requirement have stopped OSM data being used as a layer in a commercial mapping website and as part of a TV news programme.

OSMF is asking the licence authors to change the ambiguous wording "more than one source" to "one or more sources".

Why OSMF believes this change is necessary: We wish to resolve one of the most debated aspects of the existing licence, and to encourage use of OSM data in ways that do not damage the project. We believe the approach taken by ODL-Database is a sensible one.

Note: 'Reverse engineering' from derived works

ODC-Database makes it explicit that lines traced from an OSM mashup or map (or other map made with OSM data) are still subject to the licence requirements (4.7).

Note: Parallel distribution

ODC-Database requires a database protected by "technological measures" - for example, map data in a sealed GPS car navigation unit - to also be made available in unrestricted form (4.6).

Criticism

In a posting on legal-talk, Jordan S. Hatcher, one of the drafters of the ODL, sums up the Science Commons argument for their protocol for open access data:

• In jurisdictions outside of Europe, the licence would rely on contract law and other non-copyright claims for restrictions over the factual data used apart from the database. This is a comparatively weaker form of protection than copyright.
• Science Commons has political reasons for not wanting to use the European Database Law because they think it is a bad law. The law has attracted criticism elsewhere, including within the EU's review of the database directive.
• OSM has different considerations to take into account when comparing them with commercial data providers.

For these, and other, reasons, the Science Commons people are suggesting that OpenStreetMap and any other data providers wishing to provide open data should adopt a licence or dedication that meets their Open Access Data Protocol as explained in their FAQ. This approach is more or less "Public Domain with a moral component" meaning that there is a legal tool dedicating work to the public domain and a non-binding community statement asking to provide attribution, among other options. Creative Commons is implementing this protocol in their new CCZero (or CC0) tool. The Open Data Commons project has also implemented this protocol with a dedication specifically meant for data, the Public Domain Dedication and Licence, together with a Community Norms statement.

Hatcher summed up the SC position as:

"The SC point out that all this sort of stuff can be a real pain, and isn't what you are really doing is wanting to create and manipulate factual data? Why spend all the time on this when the innovation happens in what you can do with the data, and not with trying to protect the data in the first place."

External links

• Debian Social Contract
• DFSG and Software License FAQ