Licensing Question

Does anybody know if it is allowed to import “World Database On Protected Areas (http://www.wdpa.org/)” data into OSM?
They have shapefiles & kml files for national parks in Africa I would be interested in updating. I’m fairly new and was wondering if anyone has an idea about this site.
http://www.wdpa.org/TermsAndConditions.aspx

Hi,

No luck this this dataset because of

  1. NO COMMERCIAL USE
  2. NO SUB-LICENSING OR REDISTRIBUTION OF WDPA DATA

Why not email them and get their permission? Unless they are profiting from sales of maps they may not have a problem.

I may do that then. Does an example letter of this kind exist?

Don’t know.

May be you can frase your request in such a way that not only you but everyone can use the shapefiles to import park boundaries in openstreetmap. ( I would like to do it for Mongolia).

Please keep us informed.

I don’t think so, but based on the structure of an email I sent to my local management office of a nearby national park, I would suggest this:

  • Draw their attention to OSM and what it’s all about
  • Suggest that they can make use of it and the benefits to them - on their website and on paper free of restrictions
  • Ask if you can use their shapefiles and volunteer to input them, but point out the differences in licensing and that the data would be free for commercial use

Good luck!

This is a slightly edited version of the email itself. There was too much detail in the original and I wouldn’t do it that way again. For info, they also use a different slippy map and had superimposed the park boundary on top of it and I wanted to encourage them to adopt OSM and add further details as they saw fit.