Licensing Working Group/Minutes/2023-04-03

OpenStreetMap Foundation, Licensing Working Group (LWG) - Agenda & Minutes
3 April 2023, 18:00 UTC

Minutes approved on 2023-05-15.

Participants

Dermot McNally
Kathleen Lu (Chairing)
Jim Vidano
Tom Lee
Guillaume Rischard (OSMF board)

LWG members
Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi

Absent

Simon Hughes
Tom Hummel

Guests

None

Administrative

Adoption of past minutes

2023-03-06 Approved

Previous action items

Reportage and action item updates

Bing MapBuilder

Background

The Microsoft MapBuilder was presented to the OSMF board and to Advisory Board members during November 2021: Microsoft presentation - "MapBuilder, an experiment to build the best map" during an Advisory Board meeting. Its initial implementation allowed some Microsoft users to submit changes to the OSM data via a single account, instead of having one account per individual contributor. This led to the single Map builder user OSM account getting a block by the Data Working Group (DWG) on February 2022.

The Data Working Group (DWG), after a request by the board, sent a list of requirements for contributions to OSM via external services - such as the Microsoft MapBuilder - for the contributor to be a meaningful part of the community, including:

Ability to be contacted through means that OSM offers, e.g. messages on changesets created by the individual.
Being aware of contributing to OSM.
Consenting to our licence terms.
Being able to be moderated/blocked - vandalism shouldn't be able to slip under the radar through a common account.
Being able to delete all contributions by a particular user.

There has been communication between Microsoft, individual board members and the DWG, and at least two online meetings in 2022 with some members of the OSMF board: on 2022-03-03 and on 2022-06-20. The current implementation of MapBuilder does not use a single account for all of the edits submitted to OSM, but there are other concerns by the DWG, the board and some community members. The latest meeting between Microsoft, DWG and board members seems to have taken place in January 2022.

Related LWG discussion:

2023-02 Board business - Complaint regarding Bing MapBuilder

Related board discussions:

2023-01 Any other business: Microsoft's MapBuilder (mid-month board chat, not open to observers)
2022-06 Reportage: MapBuilder implementation proposal
2022-03 Contributions without individual OSM accounts Public board meeting, mid-month board chat, not open to observers
2022-02 Contributions without individual OSM accounts Public board meeting, board chat, not open to observers
2022-01 Contributions without individual OSM accounts
2021-11-12 Editing without an OSM account (mid-month board chat, not open to observers)
2021-11-02 Microsoft presentation - MapBuilder, an experiment to build the best map (during an Advisory Board meeting)

The LWG was cc'ed in communication between Mikel Maron (OSMF board) and the MapBuilder team, asking for further details.

Single sign-on is not an LWG issue.
The licencing question depends on the type of data and what they intend (e.g. imagery tracing).

No replies yet.

Any updates on reported attribution cases?

Reports in OTRS:

Ticket#2021081210000057 printed maps with false copyright
Ticket#2022011910000082 interparcel.com: Dermot Emailed them on 10th Nov, no reply
Ticket#2022012610000149 https://poster.printmijnstad.nl/editor/city
Ticket#2022033010000217
- complaint that Aberdeen city council may not be attributing correctly – https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/news/consultation-starts-street-improvements-ashgrove-road
- Note that Aberdeen credits Ordnance Survey, so possible OS is using OSM as one of many sources and the full attribution is not getting carried through
Ticket#2022032710000125 - https://www.evri.com/find-a-parcelshop
- Hermes UK changed name to evri. So this is an old issue.
Ticket#2022062610000078 -
- Härryda, Sweden, uses Open Street Map for an app they developed. Inside the app there are no license references to OSM.
- You can see the app on the Google Apps store here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=se.harryda.medborgar.app&gl=US
Ticket#2021120810000146 mondialrelay.fr not attributing correctly

Trademarks – any updates?

1. Guillaume - HOT trademark agreement update.
2. Guillaume - Evidence of use in Philippines status.
3. Simon - Any new notices.

HOT

They have no Executive Director yet, who can talk to OSMF.

Philippines trademark

Guillaume Rischard (OSMF board) has asked Arnalie Vicario (OSMF board) but has not heard back.
No evidence received from the community.
Need just some screenshot of mark used in the Philippines. E.g. local website.

This item might be no longer relevant as the deadline probably has passed.

How to pass tickets to the Operations Working Group (OWG), or does OWG have a template answer?

Background by LWG

Example ticket content: "I would like to use OSM maps for a new non-commercial science project in Poland (Europe). Are there legal restrictions on using map zoom? We are currently using maps at site https://meteo.imgw.pl/dyn/ and cannot zoom to level 1 lower. Could you explain me what zoom level can we use?"

"I am developing a web app for independent couriers, and using OSM/Leaflet routing engine to display directions with multiple waypoints. I am using OSM because I believe in your mission, and the philosophy of open source in general, but I also want to be respectful of API bandwidth.I am currently in development and have no paying customers, but so I can plan, at what user volume/threshold should I consider deploying OSM on my own server?"

Does OWG has a template to give to LWG to answer questions like the above?

OWG is not in OTRS so LWG cannot pass tickets to their queue.
OWG uses GitHub tickets mostly for public messages.
OTRS is used for emails that can contain private information. (OTRS is an issue/ticket tracker used by several Working Groups of the OpenStreetMap Foundation.)

Suggestions

Contact Paul Norman or Tom Hughes.
Create an OTRS group for one of the OWG members.
Look at creating an LWG group on GitHub. Then OWG can tag the whole LWG or LWG members on GitHub tickets.

Action item: Guillaume Rischard to ask Grant Slater (Senior Site Reliability Engineer).

We get a lot of complaints about missing attribution. How do we want to deal with those?

The LWG:

Does not have the bandwidth to deal with all the incoming cases regarding missing attribution.
Has sent some emails regarding cases of missing attribution, based on a template email which they created and was inspired by similar letters sent by the OSM Belgium community.

Suggestions

Hiring: hire someone to send emails to people who are missing attributions.
- Would need to provide very detailed instructions, otherwise it will go wrong and might generate bad press.
Community-led process: Publishing the official template letter for cases of missing attribution ("love letter"), put it on the website, would help.
- Give signal to the community that the LWG takes this seriously, e.g. ask for translations of template emails regarding missing attribution ("love letters").
On process: Establish one and require people to have sent an "LWG love letter" first, regarding attribution failures.
On content of template LWG email: Find wording that makes it clear to the recipients of the letters that the letters come from mappers.

Other points mentioned during discussion

legal-questions@osmfoundation.org is not the right place for the complaints about missing attribution.
A lot of community care about attribution and it also has the potential to annoy a lot of data users.
If the board wants OSMF to be involved with this, they should set-up a process and put resources behind it: screen requests to send letters regarding missing attribution, send them and get them translated.
Freelancing can still occur.
Some Mapbox customers get unpleasant emails from people speaking allegedly on behalf of OSM.

Action item: Dermot to find wording that makes it clear to the recipients of the "love letters" (emails about cases of missing attribution) that the letters come from mappers.

Queries to legal-questions

Case of German Federal Mapping Agency buried attribution

German Federal Mapping Agency uses OSM data in one of their projects but has attribution under many link layers, more than Apple.
Other sources that they may be using are less buried than ours.
FOSSGIS legal people have a different interpretation of the Open Database License (ODbL).

Action item: Guillaume to send them the Attribution Guidelines.

Ticket#2023021610000155 - City of Helsinki web portal

Background by LWG

To whom it may concern,

The City of Helsinki is developing a public web portal for individuals, companies and organizations to help estimate possible harm caused to other infrastructure users. Harm could be caused, when a construction project causes some interference with currently functioning infrastructure (e.g. bike routes) and services (e.g. tram or bus lines).

Portal implementation is published as open source. Implementation and related data are described in the Appendix.

We would be very pleased if you could help us by commenting on our specific questions on your behalf. Please also see the Appendix to clarify the purpose of our service, and our intended usage of OSM data.

Question 1:
We have planned to utilize the OSM database as described in the appendix. Is our interpretation of the license requirements in alignment with yours?

Question 2:
Do you agree that we have fulfilled the requirements of the license, if we proceed as described in the appendix?

Appendix:
Motivation and background for “Haitaton” web portal

Haitaton web portal and relevant processing methods are described. Please comment the correctness of our interpretation about OSM licence at “Conclusion and our interpretation” -section.

Haitaton service is a property of City of Helsinki.

Description of “Haitaton” web service portal
“Haitaton” is a public service for individuals, companies and organizations to help estimating possible harm caused by oncoming or planned construction project activities.

“Harm” here could be possible temporary effect on bus lines, required alternative traffic route caused by the construction, or a need to reroute cycling routes, just to give a few examples

Reference GIS materials
Reference GIS materials for Haitaton service are formed from e.g. GIS materials describing static infrastructure, including OSM data.

Reference materials are saved into service backend.

Project effective area
Project owner (or project participant) - a user - provides area description of the project by drawing interactively effective project area, using provided tools by the Haitaton service.

Effective project area is saved into service backend.

Harm computation
Harm computation is performed by the service backend. Computation is based on GIS analysis between reference materials and project effective area(s).

Predefined thresholds and rankings are computed and prepared by domain experts beforehand.

Severity of harm is computed by compating GIS analysis results to previously computed rankings and/or thresholds.

Result from harm computation is compared to thresholds, and resulting harm estimate is further used in Haitaton service.

Details of material preparation for reference material purpose
OSM material is downloaded in a batch process, selection of OSM line geometries are buffered, and these buffered geometries are saved as reference geometries to service backend.

Buffered OSM geometries represent only one part of the reference material.

Conclusion and our interpretation

As we understand, our responsibilities (regarding OSM license) is extended to polygons (generated from OSM lines via buffering operation). We are already currently providing the method to compute these polygons from OSM material.

Interpretation, OSM data
Our interpretation is, that we are obliged by the OSM license to attribute OpenStreetMap community, and share buffered geometries or method to generate geometries.

Buffering operation is already now shared in public repository.

GitHub repository to produce buffered polygons is: https://github.com/City-of- Helsinki/haitaton-backend OSM data detailed processing is triggered in (dev branch as of 6.2.2023): haitaton-backend/scripts/gis-material-update/fetch/fetch_data.sh and haitaton-backend/scripts/gis-material-update/process/process_data.sh We interpret, that our responsibility regarding share-alike requirement is fulfilled by providing instructions and methods to reproduce same geometries that Haitaton service does.

Interpretation, other materials
Our interpretation regarding other data in Haitaton service is, that OSM license is not extended to user generated polygon data, or any other non-OSM user data for that matter.

Using OSM in background to calculate the likelihood for people doing constructions.
They seem keen to point out the open source nature of their tools.
Creating polygons of OSM material and they use these polygons in their back-end database: probably trivial transformation. For machine-transformations that are systematic, you can provide the method, and they already do that.
They're doing enough to satisfy the spirit of the letter of what the licence requires.

Ticket#2023030810000178 - Serbian Geodata

Background by LWG

Hi LWG, I am Branko from OSM Serbia community and in CC is Slobodan from UNDP, one of the people influential in bringing open data laws in Serbia.

Our country's government created platform and released some open data couple of years ago, that we were already using and importing, like administrative boundaries[1][2] and GTFS data[3]. From December 2022, complete address registry of Serbia became open. We wanted to announce intention to import this, but we figured out that we should first add reference to Serbian Geodetic Authority[4] and the National Open Data Portal[5] to https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright, as this data is under public domain license and we are required to cite the source of open data in accordance with the Serbian Open License (Law on eGovernment, Article 26).

I tried to create change for it[6], but Tom Hughes mentioned there that we first need to check with LWG about this, hence this mail.

If this is wrong contact, please let us know whom we should contact better?

Also, if we can help resolve this matter in any way and/or provide any artifacts to help you, please let us know.

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Serbia/RGZ_Import
[2] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/imports/2020-January/006149.html
[3] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Public_transport_in_Serbia
[4] https://geosrbija.rs
[5] https://data.gov.rs
[6] https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/3959

Information copied from website and shared during the meeting.

Data License - Serbian Open Data Portal
(1) Any use of data published at this portal will be permitted provided it fulfils the requirements of this license (hereinafter: the License) that is drafted in conformance with the Article 26 of the Law on Electronic Governance (Official Gazette of the RoS, no. 27/2018) and the relevant bylaw. By utilizing the data provided under the License the user indicates his/her acceptance of all the terms and conditions of the License as specified below.

(2) Data sets published at the portal by public bodies, unless stipulated otherwise, shall be available for re-use as open public data in machine readable form. The data provided may be re-used by any legal or natural person, for commercial and non-commercial purposes, which include, without limitation, possibility that data be copied, distributed, made available to third parties, adapted and merged with other data, integrated in business processes, products and services, altered, as well as re-used for any other purpose different from the purpose for which data were initially collected and processed in the course of public body work.

(3) Right of re-use granted by this License is non-exclusive, is not limited by time or territory and covers the content and the structure of the published datasets, as well as related metadata.

(4) Data covered by the License are published in their original form, with no guarantees with respect to their accuracy and suitability for any particular purpose, unless otherwise is particularly specified.

(5) Data covered by the License are available for utilization and re-use without charge.

(6) By utilizing the data the user undertakes to ensure that upon each re-use, in the appropriate form, he/she refers to the source of data (including the name of the public body that has made the data available via this portal), states the download/take over date, states the address where

Members of the OSM Serbia community made their own judgement that the Serbian governmental Geodata is ok and they want to add a reference to the Serbian governmental data.
The LWG has to look at the licence.

On licence of the Serbian governmental Geodata

Open Licence in French https://github.com/etalab/licence-ouverte/blob/master/LO.md#licence-ouverte-20open-licence-20, designed for ODbL compatibility
Terms page has english text provided by the Serbian government.
Each dataset can have its own licence.

On checking if there are pass through attribution requirements

Ask them to point us to the original text.
Do machine translation.
If the text is fuzzy, find someone who is versed in the actual legal text.

Suggestion Ask the Local Chapter in Kosovo to help.

Other points mentioned during discussion

No guarantee that the licence that an administrative body puts up under open data release has to do with the statutory authority that made them release the data in the first place.
Concern how to deal with future requests of licences in languages that are not easily understood.
Dual branded.

Action item: Tom Lee to reply to them on GitHub asking for additional details.

Guillaume Rischard disconnected from 28 to 32 minutes after start.

Tom Lee disconnected 37 minutes after start.

Ticket#2023031810000097 - onwheelsapp

Background by LWG

Hi,

We are a non profit from Belgium working on collecting data about the accessibility for wheelchair users of public buildings.We have had contact with the OSM Belgium community about transferring our existing dataset to OSM and using the right tags and restrictions. There are still some legal questions we haven about privacy of our users:

1. Now people can use our app to view and add new locations for free. To make it easy for everyone we don’t ask people to make an account. We only ask people to fill in their email when they add or edit a new location. Mainly for internal reasons so we are able to contact them when they make the same mistakes, but this info is not open to the public. With our new app we are building we will host all our data in OSM. People will be able to view, edit and add data directly in OSM. The standard in OSM is to also add the contributor (email) to the dataset. But this is something we rather not do, since this private data will be open for everyone. Instead we would like to add a general contributor tag from On Wheels (info@onwheelsapp.com), if someone from the community needs to contact. We would keep the personal info of the user of the app on out back end if this user needs to be contacted. What is possible is that we generate an internal user number to an email address and send this user number as the contributor tag together with our general contact info to OSM. For example; OnWheels:user=203. Is this a solution so we don’t infringe on the OSM restrictions and legal privacy laws?

2. We are working on a text for the data license (users will need to agree with this before using the app) and want to know if this text complies with the legal data license set by OSM?

On Wheels has set the goal to convert its existing database to an open data license. We do this by hosting our data directly in OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap (OSM) data is distributed under the Open Database License (ODbL). The Open Database License (ODbL) is a license agreement intended to allow users to freely share, modify, and use this Database while maintaining this same freedom for others. All data collected and modified with the On Wheels app can be used freely by everyone when attributed to OpenStreetMap and On Wheels. Because we want to ensure our users that our data is correct and verified, we ask not to delete and change data collected by us without contacting us first. Please visit our OSM wiki page for more information about the data we collect and the correct descriptions and tagging: (has to be made).The On Wheels app uses map data from OpenStreetMap which is rendered by our own On Wheels design, such as icons, colours and user interface.On Wheels commits to educate and inform its users to ensure the high quality data rules set by OpenStreetMap, and to implement quality control functions in the app before sending the data to OpenStreetMap. On Wheels or its users cannot be held accountable for any mistakes, but On Wheels can be contacted for tips to improve the quality of our data: info@onwheelsapp.com. For more detailed information about copyright rules please visit: www.openstreetmap.org/copyright

onwheelsapp vs Wheelmap

Seems to provide more information.
We might get duplication, like we did from Wheelmap for 2 years, if they operate from non-live OSM data.

Wheelmap vs Microsoft MapBuilder

Wheelmap has been grand-fathered in and only one tag can be changed.
MS editing is more broad.

Options

Suggest that their users become OSM contributors, as they might have not considered that.
- Signing for OSM is not trivial - there is a barrier to entry.
- You have to understand the consequences of editing the database.
They vet all the information before it gets added to OSM and take full responsibility.
- Data might fall under import guidelines or organised editing guidelines.
- Understand that the whole organisation might get blocked.

Concern

No way to ensure that people have not copied from other apps.

Other points mentioned during discussion

Data imports from organisations/governments have intermediaries and it is acceptable to have an intermediary, as long as they take full responsibility.
- Sometimes there are updates to those imported datasets.
Many apps allow their users to log-in to OSM, so they could do that.

The current onwheelsapp data has been collected using Google, so it cannot be added to OSM so far.

Response draft: Looks like from the website that they use Google to collect previous data, so that data cannot be imported into OSM.

Ticket#2023032410000272 – Asesoría

Background by LWG

Buenas tardes. Solicito su apoyo amablemente para asesoría en contribución de información a la plataforma de OSM. La cual contempla información de tipo vectorial: líneas (nomenclatura de calles oficiales del municipio de Temoaya, Estado de México, México) y polígonos (límite de localidades oficiales del municipio de Temoaya, Estado de México, México, así como el límite oficial del municipio de Temoaya, Estado de México, México). Lo anterior conservando las etiquetas correspondientes a: - nombre de calle (línea), - nombre de localidad (polígono) - superficie (polígono) y, - notas adicionales (en polígonos). Gracias. agradecería bastante su apoyo.

Saludos.
Benito Romualdo Palma Temoaya, Temoaya, C.P. 50850, Estado de México, México.

Google translation by LWG:
Good afternoon. I kindly request your support for contribution advice of information to the OSM platform. which includes information on vector type: lines (nomenclature of official streets of the municipality of Temoaya, State of Mexico, Mexico) and polygons (limit of localities officials of the municipality of Temoaya, State of Mexico, Mexico, as well as the official limit of the municipality of Temoaya, State of Mexico, Mexico).
The above keeping the labels corresponding to: - street name (line),
- locality name (polygon)
- surface (polygon) and,
- additional notes (in polygons).

Thank you. I would greatly appreciate your support. Greetings.

It seems that they didn't know how to contribute.

Action item: Dermot to put Benito Romualdo Palma Temoaya in touch with the Mexican community.

Next Meetings

2023 LWG meeting dates:

Monday May 15, 1700 UTC
Monday Jun 12, 1700 UTC
Monday Jul 10, 1700 UTC
Monday Aug 14, 1700 UTC
Monday Sep 11, 1700 UTC
Monday Oct 16, 1700 UTC
Monday Nov 13 – back to 1800 UTC
Monday Dec 11, 1800 UTC
Monday Jan 08 2024, 1800 UTC

US daylight savings start - Mar 12 2023
EU daylight savings start - Mar 26 2023
EU daylight savings end - Oct 29 2023
US daylight savings end - Nov 5 2023

Meeting adjourned 56' after the start.

Navigation menu

Licensing Working Group/Minutes/2023-04-03

Contents

Participants

Absent

Guests

Administrative

Adoption of past minutes

Previous action items

Reportage and action item updates

Bing MapBuilder

Any updates on reported attribution cases?

Trademarks – any updates?

HOT

Philippines trademark

How to pass tickets to the Operations Working Group (OWG), or does OWG have a template answer?

We get a lot of complaints about missing attribution. How do we want to deal with those?

Queries to legal-questions

Case of German Federal Mapping Agency buried attribution

Ticket#2023021610000155 - City of Helsinki web portal

Ticket#2023030810000178 - Serbian Geodata

On licence of the Serbian governmental Geodata

Ticket#2023031810000097 - onwheelsapp

Ticket#2023032410000272 – Asesoría

Next Meetings