Chris, I probably oversimplified it a bit. Much depends on what is meant by “in the public interest”; if this requires something closely related to a disaster-relief map, it seems a fairly narrow exception. And how does one determine whether an application is in the public interest? Does one simply post the application and hope that there will be no complaint?
I’ve read the FAQ (and several other pages that discuss the same topic). One issue is that descriptions vary. In some cases, there are references to “for-profit” or “commercial” sites; in others such as the FAQ, there are no qualifiers—the reference is simply to “Web sites and applications using each of the Maps API,” or “your site,” or similar. In any event, “for-profit” doesn’t appear to really mean “for-profit,” so its use invites confusion. Dropping the qualifiers would at least eliminate the invitation, and probably address 90% of the problem. Had I not seen the qualifiers, both on several pages to which one can get following links from the ToS and developer resources and in many articles and blog entries that followed the announcement of limits late last year, I’d probably never have raised the issue. There is also a question of what constitutes a “nonprofit.” I was told that it was a 501c3 [sic], with no exceptions. This seems at odds with the FAQ as well as the normal definition of “nonprofit” In the US, it’s is a state term; in California, we have three general classes. The US Internal Revenue Code has 29 categories that are exempt from taxation; 5 qualify for tax-deductible contributions. I assume, of course, that the US Internal Revenue Code doesn’t count for much in your part of the world. It’s probably not possible to cover every situation, but the stated usage limits should at least be clear and consistent, which they currently are not. This forum probably isn’t the place to sort this out, but unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an appropriate forum. Perhaps someone from Google could pass this on to the folks who do deal with such issues. Jeff Conrad -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps JavaScript API v3" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-maps-js-api-v3/-/9jJdeHHmge8J. To post to this group, send email to google-maps-js-api-v3@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to google-maps-js-api-v3+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-js-api-v3?hl=en.
