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Is it legal to use OpenStreetMap in a pc game? My plan is to create a game that downloads information for streets, city names, and elevation to create the "game world". I do not plan to include any of this information in the actual code (it will be downloaded at runtime). Alternatively, could I download the database and distribute it with the game while giving credit to the OpenStreetMap foundation? |
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Hi Michael, sounds like a nice idea, indeed we had some earlier approaches to make use of OSM in games or gamification concepts: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Games Yes, it's absolutly legal to make use of OSM, but of course you need to respect our open license. Also I suggest to make a prominent hint/attribution to OSM, maybe with a "thank you", as a crowdsourcing project has also some social aspects and check if you might release your game/libs/... as open source to give something back to the community :) But please pay attention that your gamers don't start editing OSM to create levels or to do any cheating. This is usually one of the fears of our community if games make use of our data and the gaming community doesn't understand that we collect real world data. 2
… and the usage policies of the used servers need to be respected (if you are using non-osm.org servers then you need to look for their policies). This is very important in the mentioned case of "downloaded at runtime". A part of being nice.
(15 Jan '14, 10:14)
aseerel4c26 ♦
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I'll definitely release the libraries for the game. Thanks for the post!
(16 Jan '14, 00:57)
Michael
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https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/17855/use-of-osm-in-closed-commercial-softwarelease read these answers https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/17855/use-of-osm-in-closed-commercial-software and legal rules http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Database_License as you agree to or with the rules feel free to go. |
