The discussion in this thread seems to have been side-tracked by discussion of the White paper. That was only supposed to be an aside to explain how I come across the issue. The main question to which I was looking for an answer, was the following:
"So can I enquire as to exactly what the content licence is for OSM's geodata, and suggest that it is made clearer on the pages linked above?" The ODbL explicitly states that a separate licence is needed for the contents of an ODbL-licensed database, and it seem that this isn't currently specified explicitly on the relevant OSM copyright/attribution pages. It presumably should be. Thanks, Robert. On 29 October 2014 09:05, Robert Whittaker (OSM lists) <robert.whittaker+...@gmail.com> wrote: > The ODbL that we now use for OSM data technically only applies to the > database, and not to individual contents contained within it. For > that, the ODbL says you need a separate licence [1]. I was under the > impression that for OSM's data this licence was the ODC's Database > Contents Licence (DbCL) [2]. > > It therefore surprised me when I read the White Paper at [3], which > said that uncertainty over the content licence was a problem for > downstream users. > > When I went to check what the content licence was, I was unable to > find any definitive information where I would expect to find it; i.e. > at http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright or > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ or > http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License . The latter two seem to > suggest that the OSM Contributor Terms [4] act as a content licence, > but I don't see how that's possible, since the Contributor Terms are > concerned with people giving rights and assurances to OSMF, rather > than OSMF providing rights to data users. The Contributor Terms > themselves mention the DbCL as one of the possible licences OSMF can > use, but don't actually say that OSMF are using it for current data > downloads. > > So can I enquire as to exactly what the content licence is for OSM's > geodata, and suggest that it is made clearer on the pages linked > above? > > I guess some people may argue that the individual data items in OSM > are facts and so aren't copyrightable anyway. However, it's not > obvious to me that this is necessarily the case for all the data items > (there are certainly some things in OSM that are subject to creative > judgement) and it would seem that uncertainty over the content licence > is a real issue for data users. Even if an explicit content licence > may not be necessary, it would surely be good to soecify one like the > DbCL anyway. > > Thanks, > > Robert. > > [1] http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/ > [2] http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/dbcl/1-0/ > [3] > http://spatiallaw.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-odbl-and-openstreetmap-analysis-and.html > [4] http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms > > -- > Robert Whittaker -- Robert Whittaker _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
