Licensing Working Group/Minutes/2022-01-13

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

Draft minutes

OpenStreetMap Foundation, Licensing Working Group (LWG) - Agenda & Minutes
13 January 2022, 18:00 UTC

Participants

  • Kathleen Lu (Chairing, joined 28' after start)
  • Dermot McNally
  • Tom Hummel

Guests

  • Simon Hughes (has applied to be an LWG member)

Not present

LWG member list
Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi

Administrative

Adoption of past minutes

Previous Action Items

  • 2017-03-02 Simon Poole to determine existing obligations towards sources listed on the copyright page.
  • 2017-05-04 All/Simon Poole to review import guidelines with regards to licence “approval”.
  • 2018-03-08 All to look at the Working Groups collecting personal information.
  • 2018-04-12 LWG to follow-up on the iD editor, as the number of changesets is now included on the changeset comments thread.
  • 2019-01-10 Simon Poole to draft text to developers of apps related to geo/mapping, having OSM in their names or using variations of our logo.
  • 2019-02-14 Simon Poole to summarise the advice regarding information requests from law enforcement and send it around.
  • 2019-12-12 Simon Poole to discuss trademark registration strategy (more countries, additional classes, etc) with lawdit
  • 2020-01-09 Simon Poole to include text about downstream produced works to the FAQ.
  • 2020-03-12 Simon Poole to send to Mateusz the link with the research by Kathleen Lu on attribution on various apps.
  • 2020-09-10 Simon Poole to set-up call with Kathleen Lu and our UK lawyer about trademarks.
  • 2020-10-08 Jim Vidano to work on updating the privacy policy in relation to OSMF's use of a commercial CDN, and Kathleen Lu will have a look at it.
  • 2020-10-08 Simon Poole and Guillaume Rischard to look at the translation issue of the copyright policy page.
  • 2020-10-08 Simon Poole to send his Moovit contact to Guillaume Rischard.
  • 2020-10-08 Simon Poole to send a summary of which action items need to be done.
  • 2021-01-14 Guillaume Rischard to report on Board status re identification of outside counsel
  • 2021-02-11 Kathleen Lu to check LWG-specific membership requirements on the OSMF website and Conflict of Interest policy and provide to Dorothea any updates for the website.
  • 2021-03-11 Guillaume Rischard to sort out various email issues - Making sure Dermot McNally is on the main legal mailing issue, making sure everyone is getting OTRS email notifications for the legal queue.
  • 2021-07-08 Guillaume Rischard to meet with Dermot McNally about using OTRS.
  • 2021-07-08 LWG members to provide comment on the HOT draft trademark agreement on the next meeting.
  • 2021-07-08 Tom Hummel to reply to the gdpr_openstreepmap.org_tsfkd@ email.
  • 2021-07-08 Jim Vidano to look at next steps for Opensnowmap.org paperwork after the trademark request has been approved by the board.
  • 2021-07-08 Dermot McNally to ask Tobias for expected outcome regarding the request for change of the text of the standard tile license.
  • 2021-08-12 Tom Hummel to suggest text to be published regarding OSMF's legitimate interest in processing personal data.
  • 2021-08-12 Dermot McNally to reply to Tobias about simplifying the text of the tile licence.
  • 2021-08-12 Dermot McNally to make the pull request on Github openstreemap-website regarding attribution requirements for OSMF tiles
  • 2021-08-12 Dermot McNally to communicate back to contacts regarding Australian data attribution and suggest filling the waiver template.
  • 2021-08-12 LWG to identify OSMF legal texts that might be needed under German law to be in German.
  • 2021-09-09 Jim Vidano to ask Simon Poole whether he has previous emails contacting companies that were not displaying attribution.
  • 2021-09-09 Guillaume Rischard to check past emails (e.g. last year ones related to case in Germany where they settled in court) for any sent to companies not complying with attribution requirements and to send what he finds, including links to the Github repositories with the lists of not complying organisations, to the Signal group.
  • 2021-09-09 Jim Vidano to have create a draft template email for the community to contact organisations regarding non compliance with the attribution guidelines
  • 2021-09-09 Dermot McNally to reply to Jean-Marc Liotier (board of directors) with the LWG decision to create a template email for minor cases of non-compliance with the attribution guidelines available to the community and the LWG to directly contact bigger companies.
  • 2021-12-09 Tom Hummel to contact the person who created the OTRS ticket about printed maps without OSM attribution and ask for more information on this case.
  • 2021-12-09 Dermot McNally to email Martin Koppenhoefer (community member) asking for information on how he knows that the Canadian company he reported to LWG uses OSM.

Application by Simon Hughes to join LWG

Some points were asked to be summarised and be less descriptive.

Introduction by Simon Hughes

Kathleen joined 28' past the hour. Some points have been reordered.

  • UK qualified lawyer.
  • Head of legal at TomTom - team of 20 people.
  • Specialisation: technology and content data licensing. Major licensing deals: Apple, Microsoft etc.
  • Trademarks: Manages trademark team, not qualified attorney as such.
  • Privacy: Has a full privacy team and a data protection officer (DPO).
  • Mentioned having a slight conflict of interest as working in a company interested in using OSM data but also don't want to annoy the community.

On work that can be done for OSMF

  • Drafting and interpreting licensing guidelines.
  • Can involve people from the TomTom legal team to help the LWG, e.g. with monitoring trademark notices.

On TomTom

  • Dutch company - historically making SatNavs.
  • Used to licence data from TeleAtlas, bought TeleAtlas. Now it's a navigation technology company that sells its products/services to other companies.
  • Commercial data licensor and provides map data with navigation components, traffic services.

On interest in joining LWG as a member

TomTom wants to

  • Be a good corporate citizen of OSM and remain on the right side of the community.
  • Make sure they understand how to use the OSM data properly in a way that is seen as being compliant.

On TomTom and the OSM community

TomTom wants to

  • leverage the power of the community, where the community will make it better than a commercial mapmaker.
  • stay on the right side of the guidelines.
  • make sure that what they do as a company is not seen as aggressive/bad by the community.

On OSM community manager

Question by Kathleen on whether TomTom has a community manager.

> Has a product manager that probably came from Mapbox, Frederic Julien.
> Steve Coast, founder of OSM, is working for TomTom.

Recommendation by Kathleen to have an OSM community manager, though it's not an absolute requirement.

  • In case of issues, people can reach to the community manager.
  • Simon Hughes won't have time to keep up to the level of communication on all OSM channels and needs someone with visibility.

Simon Hughes to ask Steve Coast about whether to appoint an OSM community ambassador.

Other points during discussion

  • In the early days of OSM, CloudMade as a company working with OSM had "community ambassadors".
  • Managing the perceptions or the relations with the community by having people visibly involved and seen doing good things.
  • A lot of opinionated people in the community.
  • Simon Hughes also outlined plans of TomTom regarding OpenStreetMap.

Self-introductions of LWG members

Tom Hummel

  • German lawyer.
  • Not engaged in IT law yet.
  • Joined LWG in 2021.

Dermot McNally

  • Mapper.
  • Involved in outreach to Irish community during the time of licence change.

Kathleen Lu

  • LWG chairperson.
  • Used to work at Mapbox. Since December works at Nextdoor.

About the Licensing Working Group

  • LWG members: In early days of LWG most members were not lawyers - this has changed.
  • Received communications: Signal to noise ratio is pour.
  • LWG is a welcoming group but also likes putting people to work.
  • LWG work:
    • A lot of work involves giving guidance to community on how to deal with corporate involvement to the project.
    • We can point people to the right direction but cannot provide legal advice.
    • Monitoring trademark notices.

Reportage and action item updates

  • Kathleen has cleared the OTRS queue as of 10th of January. (OTRS is an issue/ticket tracker used by several Working Groups of the OpenStreetMap Foundation.)

HOT trademark agreement

By Kathleen: Guillaume, is there an update on the HOT (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team) agreement?

OSMF DMCA agent renewal

The OSMF DMCA agent renewal is due in April. There is no advantage to doing early, and even an disadvantage, since you have to do it every three year and it’ll reset the clock so next time you’ll have to do it three months earlier.

Check OTRS tickets

About Belgian OSM "love letters"

The information below was provided to Simon Hughes, during the discussion about an OTRS ticket.

The Belgian OSM community has drafted letters to people who were not attributing OSM. The letters were drafted in a particularly nice and polite tone and were called "Belgian love letters" by members of the Belgian OSM community.

Note: The LWG has agreed to

  • create English email templates for use by OSM community members to send to companies that do not follow the attribution guidelines and to
  • directly approach bigger companies.

Reported suspicion of copyright infringement

No update.

Needed: Update to Copyright FAQ page to match new attribution guidelines

  • LWG needs to tweak language and resolve conflicts.
  • Simon Hughes offered to help.

Action item: Simon Hughes to download a copy of the Copyright FAQ page and mark anything that is not matching the attribution guidelines or is confusing and circulate that to the LWG.

Attribution in videos

  • There are a lot of videos: movies shown on big screen and Youtube or other videos, where in addition to the credits there is a description of the video where the attribution information can also be added.
  • Attribution guidelines need to be modified.
  • LWG could come up with a proposal to the board members, who can vote on a circular.

Action item: Kathleen to draft an update sentence and ask the board to approve in a circular.

Should we ask Board to request Dorothea do agenda and trademark notice review?

Kathleen Lu (LWG) to ask Guillaume Rischard (OSMF board member) on Signal.

Rescheduling recurring meeting time

Suggestion: LWG meeting every 3rd Thursday.

  • Comment that it conflicts with OSMF Operations meetings, which Guillaume Rischard (board) and Dorothea attend, in 6 out of 12 future meetings: Apr, May, Jun, Oct, Nov, Dec.

Dorothea suggested the following non-conflicting dates for LWG meetings on Thursdays till December 2022:
Feb 17
Mar 17
Apr 14
May 12
Jun 09
Jul 07
Aug 04
Sep 15
Oct 13
Nov 10
Dec 08

Dorothea left the audio as she had to attend the OSMF operations meeting.

Decision: LWG will go with the dates listed above. Will meet at 18:30 UTC for February and to decide on the time after the daylight saving times change.

Trademark notices

Nothing noticeable.

Any other business

No other business

Next meeting

Thursday 17 February 2022 at 18:30 UTC.

Meeting adjourned 60' after start.