Shipping OSM data with a commercial application

Hi

I have a question regarding the licence. We develop commercial applications primarily using MapGuide Open source. The applications are mainly installed are used in house at our clients sites.

I would like to supply the OSM data of the UK , converted to MapGuide Opensource SDF format, to our clients for use in the application. The application is a information tool, they will store commercial information on various projects across the country.

Does the OSM allow me to convert and supply the data this way? I would be more than happy to make the converted MapGuide data available for pubic access.

Thanks

Gary

First of all I’m no lawyer, and I think if you publish tools to convert OSM to SDF then that will be very helpful.

Best place to ask is OSM legal talk, and reading the legal FAQ.

I think the key questions are

  • Is the Nestoria thing the same, they are a real estate agent that uses OSM data to show Isle of Wight properties.
  • do you want to restrict people from distributing the data you show on OSM maps
  • are you/your customers using OSM to make new data

But then again, they have been arguing on the legal mailing list for 2 years about this, so hopefully you can get a straight answer there.

I’m not a lawyer so this is no legal advice :wink:

OpenStreetMap is using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license license which requires to share your data under the same license if you combine yours with data from OSM. If you just copy the data and distribute it 1-on-1 (but in a different format) then you’re not required to share.

More info

Thanks for the responses, I will put the question up on OSM legal talk. I did take a look at the FAQ before, but it didnÂ’t answer my question, or at least the answers where not clear to me

I understand I should be able to pass it to my clients. But as soon as my clients use it for work and overlay their data on it, will they have to pass that data on to the community. If they did, then I canÂ’t use OSM, my clients data is commercial sensitive and they will not be able to make it publicly available.

Afaik (but not sure) your clients will only need to give back to the community as soon as they combine OSM’s data with theirs and sell the whole as one package. An overlay doesn’t seem as a real contribution to the OSM data to me. Anyway I think you’re in the clear on this and, personally, I absolutely have no objections against commercial use of OSM’s data.

[qoute]I did take a look at the FAQ before, but it didnÂ’t answer my question[/qoute]

Yeah I know it’s not very good, but I guess you can add questions to it…

I have no problems with Commercial applications, and I don’t think you will get into any problems because of it.