Licensing Working Group/Minutes/2024-08-12

OpenStreetMap Foundation, Licensing Working Group (LWG) - Agenda & Minutes
12 August 2024, 17:00 UTC

Participants

Kathleen Lu (Chairing)
Dermot McNally
Tom Hummel
Tom Lee

Absent

Simon Hughes
Guillaume Rischard (OSMF board)

Administrative

Adoption of past minutes

2024-07-08 Approved

Previous action items

Any updates on reported attribution cases?

Reports in OTRS:

Ticket#2021081210000057 printed maps with false copyright
Ticket#2022011910000082 interparcel.com: Dermot Emailed them on 10th Nov, no reply
Ticket#2022012610000149 https://poster.printmijnstad.nl/editor/city
Ticket#2022033010000217
- complaint that Aberdeen city council may not be attributing correctly – https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/news/consultation-starts-street-improvements-ashgrove-road
- Note that Aberdeen credits Ordnance Survey, so possible OS is using OSM as one of many sources and the full attribution is not getting carried through
Ticket#2022032710000125 - https://www.evri.com/find-a-parcelshop
- Hermes UK changed name to evri. So this is an old issue.
Ticket#2022062610000078 -
- Härryda, Sweden, uses OpenStreetMap for an app they developed. Inside the app there are no license references to OSM.
- You can see the app on the Google Apps store here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=se.harryda.medborgar.app&gl=US
Ticket#2021120810000146 mondialrelay.fr not attributing correctly
Ticket#2022120510000177 — Club Vosgien complaint – any reply?

Trademarks – any updates?

OSM US trademark renewal

Kathleen submitted samples from the OSM US merchandise website to our attorneys for the renewal of the US registration.

Trademark watch notices

We will get the invoice for the watch notices soon.

Reportage

OSMF move to the EU

Decision to not publish the minutes of this section.

From OSMF – Memberships affected by CiviCRM bug

Email to LWG

Hi Kathleen and LWG,

hope you are doing good. :)

I would like to seek your legal advise regarding the current CiviCRM issue where it accepted applications for active contributor memberships even in cases where they were not eligible (number of mapping days in past 365 days less than 42) or have not provided OSM username at all. (Issue 2 of the announcement here)

I am seeing this as an issue under acceptance of memberships (12-16 of AoA; specifically "(1) have completed an application in a form approved by the directors;") than terminating/expulsion of memberships (17-21 of AoA). So I am proposing a handling process upholding the criteria/rules of Active Contributor Membership and Board Election. In summary:
1) we check which application is affected
2) recheck their eligibility for active contributor membership to confirm their membership, eligibility to vote and eligibility to self-nominate for the Board Elections
3) those who do not meet the criteria will be annulled from the membership but will have the chance to appeal their membership and eligibility to vote/self-nominate provided they make the appeal within a deadline, to be decided with a Board vote

Flowchart of the proposed handling process is attached.

Question for LWG: In a legal perspective,
1. Is the proposed handling process legally sound and in compliance with our AoA on memberships?
2. any other advise on how to handle the membership issue caused by the technical error?

thank you for your support on the matter.

Members are supposed to pay when they sign-up, unless the board otherwise provides (AoA$25 "Unless the board otherwise provides, fees shall be payable in advance."). In this situation, the board made an error, and they provided all of these people essentially with a delay in the date that their fees have to be paid. Their memberships are not in dispute, just their fees are in dispute. We can notify them that they were incorrectly told that they were given a fee waiver, while they were not eligible at the time, their memberships are now set as "in arrears", their membership fees are now due and they have the options described below. Memberships in arrears can be "corrected" before the election starts (12 October) and if they are corrected, it doesn't affect the members' eligibility to vote.

Suggested plan
Figure out if people qualify with mapping contributions at a later date than their membership sign-up date, e.g. as of today. For those who do qualify, both their membership and their fee-waiver is accepted. If people still do not have enough mapping days, tell them that they are members, but their membership is in arrears and give them the options to:

demonstrate eligibility for their fee being waived for active contributions, e.g. by having enough mapping days by X (later) date or by
showing non-mapping active contributions by X (later) date, or
pay the membership fee of GBP15, or
ask us to terminate their membership.

Else, if people do not do any of the above, their membership is still considered in arrears. They won't be eligible to vote in the 2024 board election, and their membership will expire 1 year after the sign-up date. Important: OSMF needs to provide enough time for people to demonstrate eligibility/pay/cancel.

Some points mentioned during discussion

People with affected memberships can't be blamed of not having paid the fee during sign-up, but they have to pay now.
The Articles of Association do not mention when to collect the membership fees. OSMF can give to people e.g. a 6 moth delay to pay their fees.
People can pay up their in arrears membership up to 1 week before the AGM.
It was suggested to back-date the people's fee waivers to the date they qualified for them and accept them.

On the case of Brazil Singh, board candidate

If his mapping contributions are enough, e.g. as of today, notify him that he's a member and his fee waiving application was approved as of X date.

Pending
Unknown number of affected renewals of active contributor memberships via mapping.

Notes

Regarding the status of memberships being set as "in arrears"/"unpaid", it was suggested to either: 1) inform them that their membership will be in arrears X days after being notified by the board/MWG or 2) being notified that the membership is already in arrears. The discussion seemed to conclude that option 2 would be the simplest.
Regarding demonstrating eligibility via non-mapping contributions: I would suggest to recommend to people who want to go via that route to provide the supporting information as soon as possible, so that there is ample time to create the circulars and have a decision.

Law enforcement request

LWG requested for minutes to not be published.

Queries from Local Chapter: OpenStreetMap France – Translation of community guidelines

Background

We are glad you didn't found any major issues regarding our translation,thank you.However, it sounds difficult to host it on the local chapter website asit needs to be kept in sync afterwards.Can't it be possible to create some translations on pages likehttps://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidelines/fr instead please?

Previous email:

Dear all,

I'm a current board member of French local chapter, OSM France.

Last year, several contributors had intended to translate into French the community guidelines of ODbL license that the Foundation maintains on its website.

Many people will get better knowledge about licenses if those guidelines are given in their mother tongue. Particularly in France, many spent years in arguments about ODbL without exactly knowing what it is all about. Had the Foundation ever being asked for a local translation of those guidelines?

You can read the current revision here: https://mypads.framapad.org/p/licence-guidelines-g6g617bh

As our translation is complete, we are now looking forward to know if it's accurate and how we could improve it before any publication.

When properly reviewed, what is the best option to serve it online? Should we edit the OSM Foundation wiki with it or should the local chapter serve it on its own?

We are open to discuss about our work.You can find a thread (in French) where we organize ourselves about it: https://forum.openstreetmap.fr/t/traduction-des-licence-guidelines-et-clarification-de-lodbl-avec-lecosysteme-francais/15506

Best regards
François Lacombe
OpenStreetMap France

Simon absent.

Queries from Local Chapter: Email from Jochen/Falk/FOSSGIS

Background

I want to make the Licensing Working Group aware of some potential problems regarding EU mobility data regulations that are currently being implemented in national laws in the EU. In Germany were given the chance to comment on a draft law, which contained some regulations which could be highly problematic to OSM. I expect similar problems in other EU countries. I have written up a bit more details athttps://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/EU_Mobility_Data_Regulation

Regards,
Jochen

Old email on June 5.

The matter appears to be driven by existing EU law, which member states are required to implement in their national legislation.
The issue is likely not limited to Germany.
Tom Lee has previously discussed this with TomTom’s government affairs representative.

On what OSMF could do

There is little OSMF can influence, as only minor details may be adapted to national laws.
OSMF likely lacks the capacity to address this.
OSMF not in the EU yet.
It is unclear if OSMF could force anyone to release mobility data in a way that OSM can use it, given its limited ability to influence government activity.
We could potentially submit comments.

Concern by companies

There is concern over the requirement to publicly share real-time traffic incident data, particularly where companies may be forced to disclose proprietary information.

Other points mentioned

Downstream users face several challenges, including compatibility and sharing up-to-date information.
Most static data in Germany is provided by government organisations.

Action item: Tom Hummel to investigate the issue further.

Next Meetings

Monday 09 September 2024, 1700 UTC
Monday 07 October 2024, 1700 UTC
Monday 18 November 2024 (back to winter hours - 1800)
Monday 09 December 2024, 1800 UTC

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