Open Data License/Substantial - Guideline
Background
The Open Data License defines a term 'Substantial' which is then used in the License to define a threshold about when certain clauses come into effect.
The definition of Substantial led to a lot of questions and uncertainty within the community and it was felt that specific OpenStreetMap guidance was needed. Question were raised in the What constitutes a Substantial extract section of the Open Data License/Use Cases article.
Other communities such as OSM have developed and articulated their own supplementary advice or "Community Norm" about how such a term should be interpreted within their community.
In version 1.0 the definition of Substantial is:-
- "Means substantial in terms of quantity or quality or a combination of both. The repeated and systematic Extraction or Re-utilisation of insubstantial parts of the Contents may amount to the Extraction or Re-utilisation of a Substantial part of the Contents."
This page is an attempt to do this for the phase Substantial in relation to the Open Data License. A court would make a final decision on the issue, however these norms can still be helpful to avoid disputes arising and can be considered by the courts in coming to their verdict.
Rather than define Substantial this focus of the definitions is on what is insubstantial. If an extract does not fit the definition of insubstantial then it should be considered Substantial.
This definition aims to:
- Encourage as much as possible the worry-free use of our data for personal projects, local community and local educational projects, for commercial projects where our data is either a very small adjunct to the main thrust of the product/service or where the commerciality is clearly cottage-industry, for example village map OK, town map not OK;
- Build a case for the "qualitative" interpretation of Substantial (http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade/gradeDigitalRightsIssues.pdf, p28)
What is Insubstantial
In the discussion below a Feature is defined as being a Way (such as part a road with the same characteristics) or an independent node such as a Point Of Interest for an eating place. A node within a Way is not considered to be a feature. An area feature, such as the outline of a wood is considered to be a feature. A section of coastline is considered to be a feature - the whole coastline of a large landmass is made up of many linked features.
The OpenStreetMap community regards the following as being not Substantial within the meaning of our license provided that the extraction is one-off and not repeated over time for the same or a similar project.
- Less than 100 Features.
- More that 100 Features only if the extraction is non-systematic and clearly based on your own qualitative criteria for example an extract of all the the locations of restaurants you have visited for a personal map to share with friends or use the locations of a selection of historic buildings as an adjunct in a book you are writing, we would regard that as non Substantial. The systematic extraction of all eating places within an area or at all castles within an area would be considered to be systematic.
- The features relating to an area of up to 1,000 inhabitants which can be a small densely populated area such as a European village or can be a large sparsely-populated area for example a section of the Australian bush.
