Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

[Posted March 23, 2009 by jake]

The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project has been looking into changing the license that covers its data for some time now. A new license—the Open Database License or ODbL—was proposed in February to replace the current Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. LWN had a detailed look at the licensing issues in October 2008, but the controversy goes back at least a year before that.

Creative Commons recently made some comments on ODbL that are rather critical of the license, at least for use by OSM; it would rather see OSM data reside in the public domain—as would a number of OSM contributors. "In general, we believe that the interests of both providers and users of data and databases, particularly in science, education, and other areas where the ability to exchange and re-use data freely is critical to achieving the objectives of the data exchange community, are best served by reducing unnecessary transaction costs, simplifying legal tools, and providing as much clarity and certainty to providers and users of their respective rights and obligations as the law allows." This seems likely to muddy the waters further, which may delay or change any OSM relicensing plans.

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Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 23, 2009 23:25 UTC (Mon) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (17 responses)

I think the fear that makes them not want to just make it public domain is that the established digital mapping companies could just grab the data and give nothing in return.

Is this a bad thing? Since I currently can't buy a sat nav box that has OSM maps in it, and since the OSM data is in some ways better than what those boxes do have, it might actually be better for me if those companies (err, TomTom ???) were allowed to use the OSM data.

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 24, 2009 0:07 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (2 responses)

What is stopping TomTom from using the CC-BY-SA data?

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 24, 2009 10:43 UTC (Tue) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (1 responses)

The "share alike" bit.

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Apr 20, 2009 6:53 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

I don't see how that stops them.

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 24, 2009 6:57 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (8 responses)

Indeed, so far the reasons for the relicensing seem to be mostly negative (stop bad people from doing X) rather than positive (allow some extra uses for the map data that were needlessly forbidden before). One loosening is that, as I understand it, map _images_ will no longer have to be CC licensed: you'll be able to produce a map from the OSM data and distribute it under any terms you like.

What concerns me most of all is the way the ODbL tries to be an EULA, and take away rights you would normally have.

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 24, 2009 7:35 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

that seems like a silly loophole. what stops someone from creating a 'map_image' from the data that's machine readable and can be used to recreate the database (it's just some cpu time to do this)

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 25, 2009 8:58 UTC (Wed) by jku (subscriber, #42379) [Link] (1 responses)

dlang, that just won't work. Even recognizing all the elements would be a vast amount of work, and then you'd have a dumb collection of lines with a high error rate, without connectivity data or metadata.

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 29, 2009 6:59 UTC (Sun) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

why would it need to be that way?

give each line a unique color, and have the program 'reading' the map read the map image file (as opposed to a scan of a printout). you have 32 bits of color data, and by reading the file itself you can deal with overlaps (different layers of the image)

as for the metadata, maps have legends, so you put that metadata in the legend of the map (again, keyed by the color)

since the map doesn't have to be printed, you can make it as large as you need to to get the precision that you want in the location of the datapoints on the map.

remember how PGP initially 'escaped'? it had it's source code printed as a book, shipped out of the country and then read in via OCR. this policy doesn't even require going to paper

this would slow someone down a little bit, but not much more than that if they wanted the data.

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 24, 2009 10:47 UTC (Tue) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]

> map _images_ will no longer have to be CC licensed

The new database license doesn't cover the images, but the impression I got was that they would continue to be covered by some other more traditional terms.

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 24, 2009 11:59 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (3 responses)

This license change is precisely about allowing things that couldn't be done before, because CC-BY-SA is far too broad. Legally speaking any resulting map you make from the data is now CC-BY-SA. What about a poster where you include a map derived from OSM data? And geolocation, deriving lon/lat from a street address might also be a "derived work" but it's clearly silly to have that CC-BY-SA.

The main problem is you want to reduce the scope of the licence to cover just the raw data and nothing else, but not weaken it too far. That with the fact that the status of database copyright varies over the world. Cc-BY-SA's requirement for attribution is also annoying; do you need to list every person who contributed to the map on the poster where the map appears? Public domain would be nice, but is not realistic option.

Use of a CC-BY-SA licensed work

Posted Mar 24, 2009 12:18 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (2 responses)

These concerns don't seem to stop CC-BY-SA being used for photographs. You can include a CC-BY-SA image in your web page without the whole page having to be licensed under those terms.

This discussion of using Share-Alike works explains it:

The important thing to remember about Share Alike licenses is that, with one exception [the use of music in videos], the Share Alike provision only applies to derivative works, which the license calls adaptations. Verbatim or unaltered copies are not derivative works. Theyre simply copies, and as long you comply with the other terms of the license you can make exact copies of an SA-licensed work without applying a license to the work in which its used.

So yes, if you make your own map mixing OSM data with your own data it must be CC-BY-SA distributed. Perhaps that is a bit too strict, and forbids useful activities. But I don't see it is best solved by dragging in ten pages of legalese and a click-through EULA.

Public domain would be nice, but is not realistic option.

Why not? Relicensing the data to public domain is no more difficult than relicensing it to Yet Another Licence.

Use of a CC-BY-SA licensed work

Posted Mar 24, 2009 19:50 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

Indeed, just rendering a map is "mixing it with your own data", since a map rendering combines the raw data with styles, bitmaps, fonts and much more. Then you have mashups, made popular by google maps. Yet I'm not sure you can say the doing the same things using OSM data is not CC-BY-SA just because it's "mere aggregation". Does a route planner produce something that's a derived work? Do you want that result to be CC-BY-SA?

It would be better to have a license that didn't require every person rendering a map to publish all the components used to make it under CC-BY-SA. The goal is to protect the data, not limit what people can convert it to. Whether ODbL is that license, I don't know. Public domain is hard because it doesn't exist everywhere and there are significant contributed datasets which probably can't relicensed to be compatible. (Contributed datasets are a broader issue, but hardly any of them are PD).

Use of a CC-BY-SA licensed work

Posted Mar 25, 2009 14:31 UTC (Wed) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]

"You can include a CC-BY-SA image in your web page without the whole page having to be licensed under those terms."

Some of us at least would like to see that "loophole" closed though. Let them use BY licensed photos if they don't like BY-SA for their work. There does not seem to be much public movement towards this though. (I think I want to draw the line where a new copyright in a "meta" work comes into existence.)

all the best,

drew

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 24, 2009 7:44 UTC (Tue) by PO8 (guest, #41661) [Link] (3 responses)

IANAL, but my understanding is that it's not even legally clear that you can "release your work into the public domain". This is especially unclear outside the US. The phrase "public domain" is associated with a very specific legal concept—a copyrighted work can enter the public domain via its copyright expiring, by being made by the US government, which cannot hold copyright, and one or two other ways. But just saying "I put this copyrighted work in the public domain" may or may not actually do anything, according to the attorneys I have heard from.

In any case, retaining copyright does give rights that probably everyone wants, in particular, the right of attribution. If the copyright on OSM maps was abandoned, any person or company could claim that they created them themselves. Copyright abandonment also has interesting effects on the liability issue.

All in all, it's probably best to release this stuff under some extra-non-restrictive license, rather than attempting to abandon its copyright.

Does the public domain exist?

Posted Mar 24, 2009 9:28 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

See DJB's analysis of whether it is possible to waive copyright and, so doing, release a work into the public domain. It's true that in some jurisdictions there are rights that cannot be waived, even if you want to, and that's why the Creative Commons CC0 licence exists.

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 24, 2009 12:50 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Actually, the US Government *can* hold copyright (and the Berne Convention states that copyright covers *all* "suitable" works).

I think if you actually read the statute, the US Government is enjoined from enforcing its own copyrights (in other words, in plain English, the US Government holds the copyrights, but is not allowed to enforce those rights in US courts).

I know Debian-legal is a fount of legal knowledge (not), but it seems quite possible that the US government could enforce US government copyrights in a non-US court.

Cheers,
Wol

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 25, 2009 14:36 UTC (Wed) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]

"In any case, retaining copyright does give rights that probably everyone wants, in particular, the right of attribution."

I think it is more nuanced than this. Some may not care for the right of attribution while they may care for the right to block "wrongfully claimed attribution".

Is that clear? I will take a second shot.

I may not care to be attributed for my work. But I may not want someone else wrongfully claiming my work as their own. These are two different but related issues that we often treat like one issue.

all the best,

drew

Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap license

Posted Mar 24, 2009 10:51 UTC (Tue) by xav (guest, #18536) [Link]

The problem is that much data can't be public domain, and you end with a collection of different redistribution conditions for each data parcel on your maps - because OSMaps are aggregations of many sources.
With a common licence, at least you know that if you agree to the terms of just that licence you have no further question to ask yourself.
Well, that's how I see it.