Licensing Working Group/Minutes/2025-03-10

OpenStreetMap Foundation, Licensing Working Group (LWG) - Agenda & Minutes
10 March 2025, 18:00 UTC

Some sections of the minutes related to the topics "'Board item: UK Online Services Act", and "OSMF move to the EU" were redacted, as decided by the LWG during their May meeting.

Participants

Kathleen Lu (Chairing)
Simon Hughes
Tom Lee
Tom Hughes
Guillaume Rischard (OSMF board, joined ~6 minutes after start)

Absent

Dermot McNally (Apologies)

Administrative

Adoption of past minutes

2025-02-10 Approved

Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.

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?

Board item: UK Online Services Act

Background

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/os-toolkit/understanding-the-harms-checklist/

Need to complete online harms assessment by March 16
Likely need coordination with DWG given that focus of assessment is on moderation

Redacted minutes. The LWG during their May meeting decided not to publish the full minutes of this section. They are accessible by the LWG and the board.

OSMF's self risk-assessment for the Online Services Act is due by March 16th, 2025.

Background
Ofcom, the UK's online services regulator, has issued guidelines for complying with the UK Online Services Act, including a 400-page document on conducting risk assessments. As OSMF is based in the UK, we are required to:

Perform a self-evaluation of risks according to their 80-page guide, considering the functionalities we offer (such as user posting, commenting, chatting, etc.) and assessing risks like terrorism.
Report if there had been any incidents related to 16 different categories of harmful content on our platform. The geographic scope is limited to the impact to UK people. If the harm did not target UK individuals, it is not covered by this assessment.

Required documentation
We have to:

Maintain an internal copy of the risk assessment.
Provide the risk assessment copy to Ofcom upon request.

Reassessment

We must reassess annually or if there are significant platform changes.

Request to review the Turkish ULASAV project licence

Email shared by the LWG

The ULASAV project in Turkey publishes some of its data under the license on the link. The content is very similar to the ODbL and nothing says "this is under CC BY", references the Open Definition in their website. so I think it is compatible. but I'd like to be sure whether it would be %100 compatible. Can someone informed from the LWG check it? I've done some edits and will revert in accordance if it's not compatible. I'd be grateful.

Kathleen to write back that we can’t get the page to load, can they copy and paste the text of the license in an email? – done Feb 10

Contributor reply:
Contributor provided copies of the relevant pages, noting that Turkey geoblocks on many gov websites.

Response Feb 11:
It's hard to be 100% conclusive since I am working of off a machine translation, but it looks like the Open Data Licence/"ulasav-csb-gov-tr--license" that Turkey is using in the examples you gave is a near word for word translation of the UK Open Government Licence v2.0.
UK OGL is considered an inbound-compatible license to OSM, as long as the appropriate attribution is added to the Contributors page.
As long as your native interpretation of the language of the "ULASAV Open Source" license is also that it matches the UK OGL v2.0 license, you should be fine using these data sources for editing.

Review of documents' machine translation The ULASAV license seems to be a word-for-word translation of the UK Open Government Licence v2.0. which is approved by the LWG.

Other points mentioned

There were changes to the Turkish mapping license structure within the last 4 months.
The LWG received via email the pages related to the ULASAV license, as Turkey geoblocks access to government websites from outside Turkey.
The Turkish ministry that gives map approvals for conducting mapping activities in Turkey:
- Appears to lack communication with the Turkish Ministry of Urbanization and Climate Change.
- Publishes a list of carmakers holding mapping licenses - however, this doesn't seem to be enforced even against large corporations.

Kathleen has replied to the sender.

Canadian licence assessment: OpenMB License (Manitoba)

Email shared by the LWG

I am wondering if the Licensing Working Group could review the OpenMB License to determine its compatibility with OSM. The OpenMB License is a variant of the Open Government License–Canada used by the Government of Manitoba. Its differences with OGL Canada are minor and are as follows:

1. The sentence "Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada." is replaced with "Contains information from the Government of Manitoba, licensed under the OpenMB Information and Data Use License (Manitoba.ca/OpenMB)".
2. In the "Exemptions" section, the following is included as a bullet point between the first and second bullet points: "Information or Records that are not accessible under applicable laws;".
3. In the "Governing Law" section, the word "Ontario" is replaced with "Manitoba" twice.
4. The definition of "Information Provider", "His Majesty the King in right of Canada", is replaced with "Her Majesty the Queen in right of the Province of Manitoba and agencies, boards, commissions or provincial corporations of Her Majesty".
5. The definition of "Personal Information", "'personal information' as defined in section 3 of the Privacy Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. P-21", is replaced with "'personal information' as defined in section 1 of The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, C.C.S.M., c.F175".

This change is substantially the same as the one made by the Open Government Licence–Winnipeg, which was already deemed compatible by the LWG. The only differences are in the formatting and that OGL Winnipeg cites section 1(1) of the act. Section 1 of the act only has two subsections, and subsection (2) is unrelated.

6. The term "Records", which is not used in OGL Canada but is introduced with change 2 above, is defined as "a 'record' as defined in section 1 of The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, C.C.S.M., c.F175". https://www.gov.mb.ca/asset_library/en/legal/OpenMB-Information-Data-Use-Licence.pdf

Preliminary response by Kathleen from Dec
I'll add this to the next LWG meeting agenda (not until Jan), but if those are the only changes, then it should be fine.

Topic belated, this should have been in the January agenda.

The requester provided a detailed analysis of license differences, as requested by the new LWG process.

Licence compatibility review: Licence looked ok.

Action item: Kathleen to reply that the licence is good and to add it to the wiki.

Any other business

OSMF move to the EU

The board wants to go forward with the EU migration and almost decided for the Belgium option.
The topic of the migration was discussed at a board meeting and the decision was to ask the LWG to make a recommendation.

Guillaume suggested that he and Tom Hummel should look at the two options, Belgium and Luxembourg (with 3 suboptions). On the option of moving to Belgium

We have spent a lot of money on the Belgian lawyers, and Sarah Hoffmann (former board member) spent a lot of time on this option.
Belgian lawyers have prepared draft Articles of Association, which had the OpenStreetMap name written incorrectly.
The draft Articles of Association are currently reviewed by Craig Allan (Chairperson), who has removed the possibility of Corporate Members.
The Belgian lawyers were involved in the move of Eclipse Foundation to Belgium.
The moving process might get tedious, if we have to negotiate all the OSMF contracts.

On the option of moving to Luxembourg

Guillaume drafted Articles of Association, which he offered to upload.
The lawyers in Luxembourg were recommended by Guillaume's old law professor, who was approached but has retired.
There's a lot of documentation on Luxembourg non-profits that is multilingual documentation on non-profits.
Amazon's European headquarters are in Luxembourg and Microsoft has a big office there.

Kathleen Lu, Simon Hughes and Tom Lee had to disconnect ~ 60 minutes after start.

Redacted minutes. The LWG during their May meeting decided not to publish the full minutes of this section. They are accessible by the LWG and the board.

On board's potential wish list regarding Article of Association (AoA) changes

The dual membership (Normal and Associate membership) was always a bit annoying.
We have too many ways to become a member.
The current AoAs seem to imply physical presence at the AGM and not digital voting.

On potential donations from Corporate Members

Suggestion: Ask Corporate Members where they donate and where they'd like to donate.
- The people we know are technical and not corporate tax attorneys.

Proposed plan

Tom Hummel to read the comparison document between the Belgium and Luxembourg options which Guillaume created in May 2024.

Action item: Guillaume and Tom to have a meeting on Friday to:

identify what we need to know before choosing a path.
draft a recommendation for the next LWG meeting.

Other point mentioned

The LWG wasted a lot of time on the insistence of the UK lawyers that OSMF needs to become a charity before moving.

Scheduling 2025 meetings

The LWG set the following meetings for 2025:

Jan 13, at 18:00 UTC
Feb 10, at 18:00 UTC
Mar 10, at 18:00 UTC (note DST. 11am/2pm for US.)
Apr 14, at 17:00 UTC (everyone on summer time, same hours as usual)
May 12, at 17:00 UTC
Jun 16, at 17:00 UTC
Jul 14, at 17:00 UTC
Aug 11, at 17:00 UTC
Sep 08, at 17:00 UTC
Oct 06, at 17:00 UTC
Nov 10, at 18:00 UTC (same as normal hours for everyone)
Dec 08, at 18:00 UTC

Meeting adjourned 1 hour and 36 minutes after start.

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