Cannot import CC BY-SA licensed data

Concern has been expressed about the fate of CC-BY-SA data with OpenStreetMap in relation to the proposed move to an Open Data License. This page is available to explore the issue discussed on the Why You Should Vote No page further.

The concern

There is also going to be an ongoing future data loss if a new licence is adopted. In Australia, government databases have been consistently released under a CC licence. As the Government Information Licencing Framework website reads "The Creative Commons licensing scheme is the preferred method for licensing under GILF. Extensive legal research by the Queensland Government confirms that use of these licenses by government is appropriate.". A specific recommendation of Creative Commons (not just open data) licences is made both in the Building Strength in Innovation and Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data reports. This is put into practice for geographical data as both Geoscience Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics have made all their free (as in cost) data CC-BY-A licenced. It is likely that further spatial data released to the public will continue to be CC licenced as "The Australian Government’s spatial community (the Spatial Data Management Group) has agreed in principle to move to a Creative Commons Licensing methodology."

This licencing practice is not unique to Australia. In New Zealand, there is a push for Creative Commons licencing and spatial data is included too --Maxious 06:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

1. Creative Commons is a general licensing scheme, not specific license. It varies from CC0 to NC and other specific terms. You have to know what they specifically use. If the provider uses CC without SA (which is the viral term, also ND and NC would be problematic), then they may be compatible with ODbL, at least according to my common sense. ND and NC terms should be anyway incompatible also with the current CC-by-SA 2. Why OSM moves to ODbL after all? They claim that CC as such is not usable for databases. Assuming that this is true, any other database using CC has the same legal issue and they just must change their licensing also. In this sense the issue of "importing CC-SA data to OSM" sounds almost like an oxymoron in longer term. --Jaakl 09:23, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

In response to (2), it's taken about 3 years (and counting) for the Australian governments to harmonise with the CC licencing, we'll reset the bureaucracy clock if we move to odbl. In any case it's my belief that OSM data is a collection of opinions not facts and so there is a "Creative" element to things in any case. --Morb au 20:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

In response to "This is put into practice for geographical data as both Geoscience Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics have made all their free (as in cost) data CC-BY-A licenced." It should be clear that those 2 sites are releasing under CC-BY (not -SA). In fact CC-BY is the preferred model for Queensland Government as well. I cannot relicence my edits as I have derived from these datasets. I will need to know if odbl is compatible with CC-BY, but I am not a lawyer and I should not be expected to hire one just to work out if I can continue to contribute ...? --Morb au 20:58, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Also NearMap is fast becoming a preferred data source for Australian edits and yet it only allows CC licencing. This will also need to be considered. --Morb au 20:58, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

NearMap is a datasource that is covered by CC Attribution Sharealike (Section 5 "Derived information" of the Free Community (Personal) Licence) but they use OSM for their street layer so hopefully they would be open to renegotiating. --Maxious 00:10, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Response from License Working Group

Part of the process to come after the OSMF Membership accepting the ODbL proposal is for the Licensing Working Group to assist in getting the Community Imports cleared under ODbL. The ODbL retains the key principals of CC-by-SA (Sharealike and Attribution) Disclosure: I am a Member of Licensing Working Group --firefishy 13:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

In response, how can I possibly be well informed to vote "yes" if I don't know that the Australian Governments will come to the party if they are assisted in getting cleared under ODbL? Oh hang on, I'm not a member of the OSMF, so I don't get a say. The fate of my edits remaining visible is in the hands of my government, which in reality will move like a glacier, so bye bye visibility of my edits for years. )-: --Morb au 21:06, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I need to know *before* agreeing that the Australian Bureaucracy has agreed to a licence change. The magnitude of the data involved is huge and I have noted trite comments by European based mappers eg "Who wouldn't do a little extra mapping to fill the holes in the database?"

The coastline data from ABS and GA is far more accurate than PGS, as it is from a land survey, not aerial imaging, and the coastlines involved are almost 60000 km. We have been altering the coastline to use the ABS and GA data and deleting the PGS coastline. From ABS data we have many major waterways, some not complete, but far better detail than tracing from Landsat images. Remove the imported data and we will have a broken border, lose major parts of our Interstate borders and most major waterways. This data is not going to be replaceable in the short term. --Drlizau 0910 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Current Creative Commons imports

It has been proposed that this page or section be merged with Import/Catalogue. (Discuss)

Taken from Import/Catalogue and Australian_Data_Imports

Name	Data source	Area	License	Notes
Strassen NRW	Straßen.NRW	North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany	CC-BY-SA
UMP pcPL	UMP project	Poland	CC-BY-SA
Houses of Rostock	Kataster-, Vermessungs- und Liegenschaftsamt Rostock	Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,Germany	CC-BY-SA and ODbL	Now dual licensed. CC-BY-SA and ODbL
Heights of houses in Rostock	Kataster-, Vermessungs- und Liegenschaftsamt Rostock	Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,Germany	CC-BY-SA and ODbL	Now dual licensed. CC-BY-SA and ODbL
Frida	City of Osnabrück data collected by Intevation	Osnabrück, Germany	Explicitly relicensed from GPL to CC-BY-SA for OSM release
HSRS	HELPSERVICE - REMOTE SENSING spol. s r.o. http://www.bnhelp.cz	Czech Republic	CC-BY-SA
Zenbu	Zenbu business search engine	New Zealand	CC attribution
Kreisgrenzen Deutschland 2005	infas GEOdaten/Geofabrik	Germany	CC-BY-SA
NaPTAN - UK public transport points	Department for Transport	United Kingdom	A one-time CC-BY-SA export for OpenStreetMap	It is in principle happy with also making the data available on the ODbL licence but would make a final decision when the text for the licence is made available.
Canberra POIs (Toilets, Schools, BBQs)	ACT Government	Australia	CC-BY
QLD Property Boundaries	Queensland Government	Australia	CC-BY
Australian Administrative (Suburb/Postcode) Boundaries	Australian Bureau of Statistics	Australia	CC-BY
NearMap Aerial Imagery	NearMap	Australia	CC-BY-SA	Under discussion.
Cityracks	Cityracks (New York City Bicycle Parking)	New York	Creative Commons [Which?]
BMO	Brest Métropole Océane BMO	Brest and its surroundings	initially CC-by-sa but recently : any other license which grants "free access & free use, even for commercial purposes" with explicit OSM compatibility (see for instance this link)	Now more permissively licensed.
3dShapes	Object Vision BV	The Netherlands (buildings)	CC-BY-SA	Relicensed.