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The problem I have with OpenStreetMap is the license, it seems you can use an OSM derived base map and then layer anything else on top without problems, but you

The problem I have with OpenStreetMap is the license, it seems you can use an OSM derived base map and then layer anything else on top without problems, but you cannot process the data or mix in proprietary data without releasing the algorithm or the final dataset. So any competitive advantage derived from processing the data has to be immediately made open. So you see a lot of use of OSM as a base map, but very little use as a mapping database for commercial applications. I see why they did this, to prevent companies taking their data to bootstrap a closed competitor, but the consequence is that the data is locked in and is getting much less use than you’d hope as a database.

RicoElectrico 6y ago
Can you elaborate where license would be a problem? Keep in mind this: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidelines https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidel... Which eases the issue a little bit. For instance, MS uses OSM buildings for Bing Maps. Or Apple uses OSM for road data in selected countries (Ukraine?)
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  I’ll give a contrived example, say you’re a property startup, and you want to produce a walkability rating for each house you sell. You might want to do a calculation on OSM for restaurants within 5 minutes walk, maybe a chef rating for whether there’s a greengrocer, fishmonger, delicatessen and butcher within walking distance, or you want to take into account a walk back from the train station and the opening times to see whether the shops are still open after someone comes back from their commute. This is the kind of thing which would be interesting for big cities with a lot of commuting by public transport. My understanding is if you did this with OSM data you’d either have to make the algorithm that did the calculation public, or the output dataset (locations as keys and the final ratings for each as values). OSM has exceptions for horizontal slicing (layer separate data on top of an OSM basemap), for vertical slicing (union OSM data with separate data) and for trivial manipulations, but it seems it doesn’t if you do this kind of non-trivial processing of OSM data. So that means that it’s almost impossible for a company to find an interesting way of processing the data which can give them an advantage over a direct competitor, and there’s no real incentive to do so. This is my reading of the terms from a few months back, hopefully I’m wrong about it. But I suspect this is why it’s rare to see the data being used like this.
  - RicoElectrico 6y ago
    Well, companies do offer isochrone APIs. That, or graphical maps, are Produced Works under ODbL and only need attribution. Actually enabling that was the point of licence switch in the fall of 2012 which while mostly successful wasn't without pain points (e.g. in Australia key contributors rejected new Contributor Terms and their edits had to be redacted).
    - Brakenshire 6y ago
      Thanks, that’s interesting, it doesn’t match with my reading of the guidelines, again, glad if I’m reading them wrong and you can correct me. https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidelines/Produced_Work_-_Guideline https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidel... It says clearly there that the underlying database for a produced work has to be published. So can a competitor not just request the derived database directly from a company selling the API? Also, “ If the published result of your project is intended for the extraction of the original data, then it is a database and not a Produced Work” - does that not exactly describe an API? It talks about mugs, data visualisations, map images, physical maps and so on as produced works. I thought this meant you could protect (i.e. not release) essentially a styling of map data, but not the map data itself, which must be released.

RicoElectrico 6y ago

Can you elaborate where license would be a problem? Keep in mind this: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidelines https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidel... Which eases the issue a little bit. For instance, MS uses OSM buildings for Bing Maps. Or Apple uses OSM for road data in selected countries (Ukraine?)

Brakenshire 6y ago
I’ll give a contrived example, say you’re a property startup, and you want to produce a walkability rating for each house you sell. You might want to do a calculation on OSM for restaurants within 5 minutes walk, maybe a chef rating for whether there’s a greengrocer, fishmonger, delicatessen and butcher within walking distance, or you want to take into account a walk back from the train station and the opening times to see whether the shops are still open after someone comes back from their commute. This is the kind of thing which would be interesting for big cities with a lot of commuting by public transport. My understanding is if you did this with OSM data you’d either have to make the algorithm that did the calculation public, or the output dataset (locations as keys and the final ratings for each as values). OSM has exceptions for horizontal slicing (layer separate data on top of an OSM basemap), for vertical slicing (union OSM data with separate data) and for trivial manipulations, but it seems it doesn’t if you do this kind of non-trivial processing of OSM data. So that means that it’s almost impossible for a company to find an interesting way of processing the data which can give them an advantage over a direct competitor, and there’s no real incentive to do so. This is my reading of the terms from a few months back, hopefully I’m wrong about it. But I suspect this is why it’s rare to see the data being used like this.
- RicoElectrico 6y ago
  Well, companies do offer isochrone APIs. That, or graphical maps, are Produced Works under ODbL and only need attribution. Actually enabling that was the point of licence switch in the fall of 2012 which while mostly successful wasn't without pain points (e.g. in Australia key contributors rejected new Contributor Terms and their edits had to be redacted).
  - Brakenshire 6y ago
    Thanks, that’s interesting, it doesn’t match with my reading of the guidelines, again, glad if I’m reading them wrong and you can correct me. https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidelines/Produced_Work_-_Guideline https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidel... It says clearly there that the underlying database for a produced work has to be published. So can a competitor not just request the derived database directly from a company selling the API? Also, “ If the published result of your project is intended for the extraction of the original data, then it is a database and not a Produced Work” - does that not exactly describe an API? It talks about mugs, data visualisations, map images, physical maps and so on as produced works. I thought this meant you could protect (i.e. not release) essentially a styling of map data, but not the map data itself, which must be released.