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I've been looking over the data my city provides under a ostensibly open licence, and realizing how useful much of it is. Reading the licence over it seems plausible that it'd be compatible with our licence.

The licence can be seen here. And the datasets here

Or to save you the trouble of clicking on that, here is the licence in full:

The Open Government Licence – Vancouver

The Open Government Licence – Vancouver is based on version 2.0 of the Open Government Licence – British Columbia, which was developed through public consultation and collaborative efforts by the provincial and federal government. The only substantive change to the licence is references to the Province of British Columbia are replaced with the City of Vancouver.

You are encouraged to use the Information that is available under this licence with only a few conditions.

Using Information under this licence

  1. Use of any Information indicates your acceptance of the terms below.

  2. The Information Provider grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information, including for commercial purposes, subject to the terms below.

You are free to:

  1. Copy, modify, publish, translate, adapt, distribute or otherwise use the Information in any medium, mode or format for any lawful purpose.

You must, where you do any of the above:

  1. Acknowledge the source of the Information by including any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider and, where possible, provide a link to this licence.

If the Information Provider does not provide a specific attribution statement, or if you are using information from several information providers and multiple attributions are not practical for your product or application, you must use the following attribution statement:

Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Vancouver.

  1. The terms of this licence are important, and if you fail to comply with any of them, the rights granted to you under this licence, or any similar licence granted by the Information Provider, will end automatically.

Exemptions

  1. This licence does not grant you any right to use:
    1. Personal Information
    2. Information or Records not accessible under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (B.C.)
    3. Third party rights the Information Provider is not authorized to licence
    4. The names, crests, logos, or other official marks of the Information Provider
    5. Information subject to other intellectual property rights, including patents, trade-marks and official marks

Non-endorsement

  1. This licence does not grant you any right to use the Information in a way that suggests any official status or that the Information Provider endorses you or your use of the Information.

No warranty

  1. The Information is licensed “as is”, and the Information Provider excludes all representations, warranties, obligations, and liabilities, whether express or implied, to the maximum extent permitted by law.

  2. The Information Provider is not liable for any errors or omissions in the Information, and will not under any circumstances be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or other loss, injury or damage caused by its use or otherwise arising in connection with this licence or the Information, even if specifically advised of the possibility of such loss, injury or damage.

Governing law

  1. This licence is governed by the laws of the province of British Columbia and the applicable laws of Canada.

  2. Legal proceedings related to this licence may only be brought in the courts of British Columbia.

Definitions

  1. In this licence, the terms below have the following meanings:

"Information"

means information resources or Records protected by copyright or other information or Records that is/are offered for use under the terms of this licence.

"Information Provider"

means The City of Vancouver.

Personal Information

has the meaning set out in Schedule 1 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (B.C.).

Records

has the meaning set out in section 29 of the Interpretation Act (B.C.).

"You"

means the natural or legal person, or body of persons corporate or incorporate, acquiring rights under this licence.

Versioning

  1. This is version 1.0 of the Open Government Licence - Vancouver. The Information Provider may make changes to the terms of this licence from time to time and issue a new version of the licence. Your use of the Information will be governed by the terms of the licence in force as of the date you accessed the Information.

Reading it over I'm feeling pretty optimistic, but is it compatible? They have lots of good stuff that'd improve the map of Vancouver. After appropriate import discussions, of course.

asked 30 Sep '17, 01:23

keithonearth's gravatar image

keithonearth
2.9k5676108
accept rate: 13%

edited 30 Sep '17, 06:09


Your first port of call should probably be the talk-ca mailing list, where people are likely to have come across this issue before: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/

That said, in general, the main issue with this sort of licence is generally whether the data provider is happy that the attribution provided by 'downstream' users of OpenStreetMap is sufficient. It's impractical to ask every user of OSM data to include "© Government of Vancouver" (or whatever) in their on-map credits. Rather, we ask that people link their standard-issue "© OpenStreetMap" credit to osm.org/copyright which, in turn, provides the credits (either directly on that page for the largest datasets, or via a link to a wiki page).

That may not be enough to satisfy the data provider's attribution requirements; all you can do is ask them. Check with talk-ca first to see if anyone has already obtained permission, and if not, the Licensing Working Group can advise you on how best to approach them for permission.

permanent link

answered 30 Sep '17, 21:32

Richard's gravatar image

Richard ♦
30.9k44279412
accept rate: 18%

I was hoping that simply crediting them in the edit summary would be sufficient. From your answer I understand that may or may not be enough, and they are under no obligation to clarify that in the licence itself. Do I understand correctly?

(01 Oct '17, 00:07) keithonearth

A map produced from OSM data, containing the Vancouver data, will usually just be attributed "© OpenStreetMap". Vancouver's clear request above is that "You must... include any attribution statement specified by [the City of Vancouver]". They could well argue that just putting "© OpenStreetMap" doesn't qualify as that. Certainly noting them in the changeset comment ("edit summary") is almost certainly not good enough - at the very least they'd expect a mention on http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors, and in fact their name is already there, which suggests this might already have been cleared. Like I say, go talk to talk-ca.

(01 Oct '17, 13:01) Richard ♦
1

Thanks for the link Richard, I will point out that there's a minor typo in it, a trailing comma, which breaks the link. Here is a link that should work, directly to the Vancouver section.

(01 Oct '17, 18:11) keithonearth

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question asked: 30 Sep '17, 01:23

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last updated: 01 Oct '17, 18:11

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum