Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL
2012/10/30 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org: See also: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Closed_Issues#What_sort_of_access_to_Derivative_Databases_is_required.3F The page is quite old; the green boxes represent legal advice that we have received at the time. It is also acceptable to provide a copy, diff or instructions for the latest version of the derivative database - it isn't necessary to retain old versions of the database. You are not required to provide regular dumps - the only requirement is that you provide them on request. What if you make a derivative database and render from this. Every time you have rendered a feature, you remove the rendered feature from the database. Your latest derivative database will be empty ;-) Cheers, Martin ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL
(After a hiatus - I've been discussing this off-list with Anthony and others.) On 22/10/12 23:13, Anthony wrote: On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/10/22 Jonathan Harley j...@spiffymap.net: Anyway, the ODbL is explicit that an image is an example of a produced work, so for anyone creating them, their responsibility is clear: include the notice required for produced works. It's also explicit that a produced work is not a derivative database (4.5b), so it follows that a map image does not have to be licensed using ODbL. So, the hypothetical person wishing to publish on a stock art website only has to decide whether they wish to impose ODbL or some other restriction on their work, or not. Not imposing any restrictions on an image is clearly allowed. (In which case a database derived from the image would not be bound by ODbL.) Then this is clearly a loophole. You could render (with a dedicated style) the whole world in a very high zoom level (even as raster, if you're in doubt whether vectors might fall under ODbL), apply image recognition on it (would be simple if you used one rendered layer per feature) and reassemble the whole database. I am simplifying this process, but it is clearly possible. This (both Jonathan's comment and your response) confuses copyright law. Yes, you don't have to release a Produced Work under ODbL. But if you don't have a license on the Produced Work, then all rights are reserved. Only *if* copyright is there at all. What is in question is whether a substantial amount of material that is OSM's copyright is present in a map I make using OSM's data. If it isn't, then it follows that OSM cannot reserve any rights in my work, explicitly or otherwise. To recap, OSM does not assert database rights on a produced work such as a map image, so only copyright is in question. One thing that's confusing me, is that http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright does not say what license applies to the contents. ODbL specifically says that it only applies to the database and a separate license is required for the contents. It suggests that a notice should be inserted prominently in all relevant locations which surely includes the copyright wiki page. I remember earlier discussions on this list about using ODcL for the contents. Was this what was agreed on? LWG, anyone? J. -- Dr Jonathan Harley :Managing Director: SpiffyMap Ltd m...@spiffymap.com Phone: 0845 313 8457 www.spiffymap.com The Venture Centre, Sir William Lyons Road, Coventry CV4 7EZ, UK ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL
Hi Igor and fellow legal-talk, A rather long email, so summary: I am rather hijacking Igor's email, but I hope it will help provide an answer though not immediately. The present Trivial Transformation Community Guideline, [1], is applying tactics and discussion without having any overriding strategy or conclusion. It is therefore confusing and difficult to develop further as is. I propose that we base a re-write on: *OpenStreetMap considers **Open Data to be a usefully collected set of intelligently or machine-made physical observations only. Purely algorithmic augmentation of data and re-casting of data to use, store or transmit it in different manners is not part of the data IP. Share Alike may however apply to physical observations inside the augmented or re-cast data; in this case the physical observations must be provided to the public in a commonly used or documented open format as per ODbL clause 4.6b*. The wording might be improved, but that is the general idea. If follows the general direction of discussion within the License Working Group but takes it to a more extreme, but I think logical, conclusion. Argument follows using Igor's posting. I've read it carefully and it doesn't really answer my questions, it just raises some new ones. I rather feared that. *is there a place for proprietary/closed source software in OSM ecosystem*? Yes, that is a key question. I will argue below that yes there absolutely is a place. However, this is not necessarily a consensus view and it is presented for discussion. I see some serious issues with the way how we approach the whole ODbL thing. I do not think the issue is ODbL. The issue is the application of Share Alike to open data under whatever license. ODbL 1.0 has made a tremendous leap forward here. But it is like climbing a mountain. You need to climb the first ridge to start understanding what the rest of the climb looks like. I understand this causes issues for commercial companies, but our primary concern is growing open geodata and *very carefully* evolving open data IP to lower barriers on everyone using it in creative, productive, or unexpected ways. To properly answer Igor, we need to do two things: 1) Establish a general principle that the OSM community is happy with. 2) Determine whether the general principle can be translated into unambiguous wording without gotchas and whether it jives with specific issues, for example as per Frederik's email. It should be presented as a well-written Community Guide line. Once really understood, we can then look at whether ODbL can be improved and give input for other open licenses, such as CC. Here is what I, personally, see as the general principle and the argument for it. OSM, and possibly any open data project, is about collecting a set of physical observations and making them open in an open format. Additionally, (and not used by other projects, like US government data), we want to apply a certain amount of pressure on folks who take advantage of the results to open up and share more physical observations of their own. For that we use Share Alike. Some like this, some don't. But it is what we do. It has some great advantages for commercial entities; it has some headaches. The key words here are physical observations. Messing around with fancy algorithms and neat ways to store data efficiently provides no added value to the data itself. It does not generate more observations. It may provide more interesting information or knowledge, but that is a creative process unrelated to the data itself. [This is the contentious bit, counter comments welcome]. It is a somewhat weak software IP analogy, but if Igor writes an amazing book using vanilla Libre Office, then what he does with the book is irrelevant to Libre Office licensing. He has not done anything to improve Libre Office. The major exception to this is if Igor has somewhere along the line added some more physical observations. Share Alike may apply to these and proprietary transformation or storage mechanism may block access. The obvious solution is to make available the physical observations, just the observations, in an open format, such as OSM XML. And so hence the first attempt at creating clear, unambiguous wording with no side-effects: *OpenStreetMap considers Open Data to be a usefully collected set of intelligently or machine-made physical observations only. Purely algorithmic augmentation of data and re-casting of data to use, store or transmit it in different manners is not part of the data IP. Share Alike may however apply to physical observations inside the augmented or re-cast data; in this case the physical observations must be provided to the public in a commonly used or documented open format as per ODbL clause 4.6b *. [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Trivial_Transformations_-_Guideline On 29/10/2012 18:07,
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL
Hi Michael, For my part, I really like your proposed wording and I hope we'll reach consensus on these issues in a way that satisfies both producers and consumers of OSM data. Best regards, Igor On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 1:30 PM, Michael Collinson m...@ayeltd.biz wrote: ** Hi Igor and fellow legal-talk, A rather long email, so summary: I am rather hijacking Igor's email, but I hope it will help provide an answer though not immediately. The present Trivial Transformation Community Guideline, [1], is applying tactics and discussion without having any overriding strategy or conclusion. It is therefore confusing and difficult to develop further as is. I propose that we base a re-write on: *OpenStreetMap considers **Open Data to be a usefully collected set of intelligently or machine-made physical observations only. Purely algorithmic augmentation of data and re-casting of data to use, store or transmit it in different manners is not part of the data IP. Share Alike may however apply to physical observations inside the augmented or re-cast data; in this case the physical observations must be provided to the public in a commonly used or documented open format as per ODbL clause 4.6b*. The wording might be improved, but that is the general idea. If follows the general direction of discussion within the License Working Group but takes it to a more extreme, but I think logical, conclusion. Argument follows using Igor's posting. I've read it carefully and it doesn't really answer my questions, it just raises some new ones. I rather feared that. *is there a place for proprietary/closed source software in OSM ecosystem*? Yes, that is a key question. I will argue below that yes there absolutely is a place. However, this is not necessarily a consensus view and it is presented for discussion. I see some serious issues with the way how we approach the whole ODbL thing. I do not think the issue is ODbL. The issue is the application of Share Alike to open data under whatever license. ODbL 1.0 has made a tremendous leap forward here. But it is like climbing a mountain. You need to climb the first ridge to start understanding what the rest of the climb looks like. I understand this causes issues for commercial companies, but our primary concern is growing open geodata and *very carefully* evolving open data IP to lower barriers on everyone using it in creative, productive, or unexpected ways. To properly answer Igor, we need to do two things: 1) Establish a general principle that the OSM community is happy with. 2) Determine whether the general principle can be translated into unambiguous wording without gotchas and whether it jives with specific issues, for example as per Frederik's email. It should be presented as a well-written Community Guide line. Once really understood, we can then look at whether ODbL can be improved and give input for other open licenses, such as CC. Here is what I, personally, see as the general principle and the argument for it. OSM, and possibly any open data project, is about collecting a set of physical observations and making them open in an open format. Additionally, (and not used by other projects, like US government data), we want to apply a certain amount of pressure on folks who take advantage of the results to open up and share more physical observations of their own. For that we use Share Alike. Some like this, some don't. But it is what we do. It has some great advantages for commercial entities; it has some headaches. The key words here are physical observations. Messing around with fancy algorithms and neat ways to store data efficiently provides no added value to the data itself. It does not generate more observations. It may provide more interesting information or knowledge, but that is a creative process unrelated to the data itself. [This is the contentious bit, counter comments welcome]. It is a somewhat weak software IP analogy, but if Igor writes an amazing book using vanilla Libre Office, then what he does with the book is irrelevant to Libre Office licensing. He has not done anything to improve Libre Office. The major exception to this is if Igor has somewhere along the line added some more physical observations. Share Alike may apply to these and proprietary transformation or storage mechanism may block access. The obvious solution is to make available the physical observations, just the observations, in an open format, such as OSM XML. And so hence the first attempt at creating clear, unambiguous wording with no side-effects: *OpenStreetMap considers Open Data to be a usefully collected set of intelligently or machine-made physical observations only. Purely algorithmic augmentation of data and re-casting of data to use, store or transmit it in different manners is not part of the data IP. Share Alike may however apply to physical observations inside the
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL
On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 11:46 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: On 10/30/12 08:19, Igor Brejc wrote: Some then say that these in-memory data structures are also Derivative Databases. In what form can you then offer such a Database to someone that requests it? I don't think there's a way how one could require the making available of such a transient structure without making OSM data processing totally impractical. I agree, but in that case the author of the Produced Work could simply say: I choose to go by the clause 4.6a and publish the entire Derivative Database, but since the only practically publishable Database is the original OSM XML file, I'm sending you just the link to the downloadable extract from Geofabrik. I would thus satisfy the 4.6 clause. Am I wrong? Always keep in mind that the machine readable clause is only there as an alternative in cases where you would prefer not to make the derived database available; you can *always* settle for making the derived database available instead and then nobody cares about your software. I realize that, but I think anyone involved in making Produced Works will want to explore all the alternatives before deciding which one suits them most. (Btw. you always write source code but the ODbL does not talk about source code; isn't a binary just as machine readable?) You have a point. I guess I was just repeating the logic mentioned in the Open Data License/Trivial Transformations - Guideline without really thinking about it. Igor ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL
On 30/10/2012 13:07, Jonathan Harley wrote: (After a hiatus - I've been discussing this off-list with Anthony and others.) [snip] One thing that's confusing me, is that http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright does not say what license applies to the contents. ODbL specifically says that it only applies to the database and a separate license is required for the contents. It suggests that a notice should be inserted prominently in all relevant locations which surely includes the copyright wiki page. I remember earlier discussions on this list about using ODcL for the contents. Was this what was agreed on? LWG, anyone? Hi Jonathan, The short answer is the the contributor terms control content and that the relevant wording there is heavily modelled on ODcL. As a low priority TODO, I'll trace back the exact mechanism to see if we can be more obvious about the relationships on the copyright page without using tortuous language. It has been a while. ODbL can basically be used in two ways; a (or even multiple) contents license more restrictive than the ODbL itself or less restrictive. The first case can be useful if distributing a collection of things, content, that are useful discretely, for example photos or scientific papers. In that case, the database can be downloaded freely, sent around to others and used in-house, but each photo might have a commercial fee-paying license if it was then extracted and published in a magazine. We used the second case as we wanted a one stop shop whereby end users only have to consider one license and not compare and contrast. The CTs, for example, give end users no extra rights and no extra freedoms. Mike ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL
Hi Igor, I'd like to address a couple of points. On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Igor Brejc igor.br...@gmail.com wrote: Not one company will dare to give out their proprietary source code to someone, even if they release it under a very strict license. The risks of someone inadvertently then pasting that code on pastebin (example) are just too great - and there's no way back. This is not a problem of ODbL. If the end user distributes the source code against the wishes of the publisher then the user did so illegally. It's no different than if someone were to distribute MS Office binaries via Bittorrent against the EULA. Also, as Frederik mentioned, you don't have to to share the source code. Even a proprietary binary program (with all the DRM you want to prevent illegal distribution) would suffice. What's the purpose of it all, anyway? :) If someone releases the source code to a single person which then cannot share it with others, how does the larger OSM community then benefit from it all? The point here is not to share and give away software or source code but to share and give away data. Eugene ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL
On 30/10/2012 13:07, Jonathan Harley wrote: (After a hiatus - I've been discussing this off-list with Anthony and others.) On 22/10/12 23:13, Anthony wrote: On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/10/22 Jonathan Harley j...@spiffymap.net: Anyway, the ODbL is explicit that an image is an example of a produced work, so for anyone creating them, their responsibility is clear: include the notice required for produced works. It's also explicit that a produced work is not a derivative database (4.5b), so it follows that a map image does not have to be licensed using ODbL. So, the hypothetical person wishing to publish on a stock art website only has to decide whether they wish to impose ODbL or some other restriction on their work, or not. Not imposing any restrictions on an image is clearly allowed. (In which case a database derived from the image would not be bound by ODbL.) Then this is clearly a loophole. You could render (with a dedicated style) the whole world in a very high zoom level (even as raster, if you're in doubt whether vectors might fall under ODbL), apply image recognition on it (would be simple if you used one rendered layer per feature) and reassemble the whole database. I am simplifying this process, but it is clearly possible. This (both Jonathan's comment and your response) confuses copyright law. Yes, you don't have to release a Produced Work under ODbL. But if you don't have a license on the Produced Work, then all rights are reserved. Only *if* copyright is there at all. What is in question is whether a substantial amount of material that is OSM's copyright is present in a map I make using OSM's data. If it isn't, then it follows that OSM cannot reserve any rights in my work, explicitly or otherwise. No loop hole. Unless I am missing something earlier in the thread, this is covering very old ground. This is the LWG understanding: The buzz phrase is layered copyright. Using an open licensed photo of a MacDonald's restaurant does not give one the right to use MacDonald's logo. In our world, the classic case is the SVG file. The publisher can publish it as a Produced Work if the intent is to show a pretty picture but if someone then comes along and tries to extract and re-constitute OSM data from it, then OSM copyright applies to them. Mike http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Produced_Work_-_Guideline ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL
deliberately Offlist 2012/10/30 Michael Collinson m...@ayeltd.biz: No loop hole. Unless I am missing something earlier in the thread, this is covering very old ground. This is the LWG understanding: The buzz phrase is layered copyright. Using an open licensed photo of a MacDonald's restaurant does not give one the right to use MacDonald's logo. In our world, the classic case is the SVG file. The publisher can publish it as a Produced Work if the intent is to show a pretty picture but if someone then comes along and tries to extract and re-constitute OSM data from it, then OSM copyright applies to them. deliberately Offlist Mike, thank you for this statement I am glad to read this and I really hope it is like this. The intentions should be associated to the use and not to the producer of the work (i.e. like you wrote above and not like I read it here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Produced_Work_-_Guideline ). Someone could produce a SVG with the intent to show a pretty picture (i.e. not intended for the extraction of data and thus clearly a produced work), but who then comes along and uses it with different intentions (data extraction) must not do it, because in this case the same work turned automagically into a database. (That's why it is important that every produced work has strings attached, (c) for the data OSM contributors, ODbL1.0, which fortunately is part of the current guidelines) Part of my worries rise from the fact, that it seems there once was an anti-reengineering clause in the ODbL which was then removed to obtain compatibility with cc-by-sa and other share-alike licenses. Isn't this an indication that re-engineering is allowed? I mean, why else would it have been removed? (argueing from an offenders point of view). cheers, Martin ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL
On 10/30/2012 07:19 AM, Igor Brejc wrote: Some then say that these in-memory data structures are also Derivative Databases. They also cannot request RAM dumps of the routers and switches that ODbL data is transmitted over as they download it. - Rob. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
