Richard Weait <rich...@...> writes: >>As a side note, if using ODbL, why not make the tiles public domain?
>What would be your preference for the future tile license? Ed, do you >have a preferred future tile license? I don't think that is the important question. If the OSM project's licence says that rendered map tiles (or Produced Works, if we assume that the ODbL's terminology applies in this way) need not be distributed under any particular terms, then anybody can download the planet file and Mapnik configuration and make their own tiles released into the public domain. Since anyone can do it, it would be silly for the OSM project to choose anything more restrictive. More important is the licensing for the source data from which the images or printed pages are generated - what permission should it grant for such derived works? And the choice there is essentially 'under the same licence as the source data' or 'unrestricted'; I don't think much in between makes sense. Presumably it would help out MapQuest, CloudMade and others if they could generate map tiles from OSM without having to publish those under share-alike. And that would probably help the project. So I'd reluctantly have to conclude that allowing it is a good idea. That does jar a bit with the claim sometimes advanced that we must move to ODbL because it provides stronger share-alike provisions. >Would it be okay with you if I published my future tiles under a >license that differs from that of openstreetmap.org tiles? I don't see it would be up to me? Of course, if I had agreed to license my map contributions under ODbL then I would implicitly have agreed to that. >But the main OSM site and tile server is a special case. We should >aim to set a good example. Yes, and that good example would be public domain. What would be the point of insisting on something else, when it can be so easily circumvented by creating a Tile Drawer instance? (Unless, of course, as a deliberate step to keep load down on the tile server... but the kind of people who ignore the tile usage policy would happily ignore any licence terms as well.) >Is it simplest to keep the tile license the same as it is now rather >than risk compatibility problems with downstream consumers of tiles? I don't think a change to public domain licensing could cause any compatibility problem. -- Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com> _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
