Legal and pricing questions about the usage of OSM

Greetings, I am from a group that is developing an app using OSM and we have a few questions about its usage.

Firstly, is there a cost for using OSM? and if there is, Are there some restrictions for not paying this cost, such as prohibition of charging a third party?

Next, is there a legal contract when using OSM?

Thirdly, is there a possibility that by using OSM we lose our intelectual property of the app?

Finally, is there anythithing else of importance that we should know when programming with OSM?

Thank you for your attention.


há hắng

  1. No cost for using the data. OSM’s servers (i.e. any resources you access from openstreetmap.org) are however run entirely on donations and volunteer contributions. You should not use them for commercial services, but should instead either download the data and run your own tileserver/geocoder/whatever, or use a third-party that does that.

  2. All OSM data is subject to the Open Database Licence. OSM servers are subject to Terms of Use which you can see on the OSM Foundation website.

  3. No. But see the ODbL stipulations on “derivative database” for any data that you might add.

  4. All these things have been answered a gazillion times before - please do look at https://help.openstreetmap.org/ and your favourite search engine, which will tell you everything you want many times over.

The wiki also contains information for developers: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Develop and there is even a website devoted to people that want to switch to (or start using) OSM: https://switch2osm.org/

Good to hear that you’re interested in using OpenStreetMap data. :slight_smile:

As Richard has already explained, using OSM data is free under the terms of the Open Database License (ODbL). While this license doesn’t affect your intellectual property rights on software, it can have an impact on rights of data that you mix with, or derive from, OSM data, depending on the details.

You should have a look at the ODbL and the other resources linked in this thread for details. But one major requirement of the ODbL that hasn’t been mentioned so far is attribution: You must make your users aware that you’re using OpenStreetMap data. Have a look at the OSM copyright page for some relevant info: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright

How to act when a site uses OSM data and doesn’t respond to mail?
This site send one mail back but didn’t answer to following mail:
https://beeldbank.cultureelerfgoed.nl/alle-afbeeldingen/detail/fa159a03-6531-a756-5ca8-45128f3bbea1/media/29f60ec3-c4c4-9308-8f38-8c933d9de7da?mode=detail&view=horizontal&rows=1&page=1&sort=random%7B1451915062111%7D%20asc
I hope you see the same as I do, a small OSM map without attribution and the inners of a church.

I see a black and white photo of the front of some buildings. I don’t see anything that’s obviously OSM-based, though some of the metadata text to the left of the photo could be using OSM data.

OK sorry, I wasn’t sure if the link would work.
Here is a screenshot.
They use OSM probably with tens of thousands of their pictures.