license

There are plans to relicense the data in OpenStreetMap. So far CC-BY-SA 2.0 is used, but actually it is not the best solution, as the CreativeCommons license does not apply to databases, but to work protected by copyright law.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation has pushed the work on a new license, the Open Database License Agreement (ODbL), developed by Open Data Commons. It is not yet available in a final version, but after reading the available draft, I am convinced, that this license fits the needs of OSM and also my personal wishes.

There is a list of open issues which will hopefully be clarified before the license is released.

I’d like to thank all of those who are involved in developing the ODbL and think that it is good to use it for the OSM data.

The discussion about the licence of the OpenStreetMap data is very important. I’m not very pleased about the current situation and doubt success before any court. Therefor I’m very happy, that the OSM Foundation took the job to improve the situation. Richard, thanks for your post in the OpenGeoData blog. Also in OpenSource buisiness, where the licences and rights are a bit more clear than for the situation of geo databases, you can find examples of companies stealing open/free products and embedding them (often modified) in commercial products without giving anything back to the community or original authors. As I consider this highly unfair it is important that at least the licences require some useful feedback of modifications.

Even though I don’t care about the exact wording or the name of the licence I require the following elements for it:

commercial usage allowed
allowed to make changes
attribution in some form (attribution of the project is enough for me)
require to give back the changes (copyleft)

Just to say it loud: I am a strong supporter of a copyleft licence for OSM data and I will never give my edits into public domain!

OSM gets a new license!?!

Is Copyleft important for OpenStreetMap?