Licensing Working Group/Minutes/2025-06-16

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

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

One topic was redacted from the minutes, as decided by the LWG during their July 2025 meeting.

Participants

Absent

  • Tom Hummel
  • Simon Hughes

Administrative

Adoption of past minutes

  • 2025-05-12 Approved - Minutes for "EU move" and a DWG topic to be redacted.

Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.


Any updates on reported attribution cases?

Reports in OTRS:


Heat Map issue

Action item: Tom Hummel to add edits.


Osm-website query

We have a record of whether a user has accepted the ToS. This option has been presented to people who have signed up as of a certain date.

  • ToS https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use mention that ""your continued use of the Services after new Terms become effective constitutes your binding acceptance of the new Terms."
  • Old discussions about plans to roll out more broadly a checkbox for accepting ToS.
  • Unclear what the current plans are.

Users can be divided in different groups

  1. People who didn't agree with the ODbL. Their accounts were deactivated. Reactivation would need them to accept the contributor terms, which would include ToS.
  2. People who agreed to contributor terms but didn't have the opportunity to agree to the terms of use (checkbox option).
  3. Newer users who have this flag set, as they signed up after that was added to the login flow. Unclear if that database column is canonical.

Link shared: https://antonkh.dev.osm.org/docs/2025-05-26-tou.html

  • Pre-2012: People who didn't agree to ODbL had their accounts deactivated. If you have a pre-2012 account and have not accepted the old licence, we present this form [Image], where people have to tick 2 checkboxes (contributor terms + terms of use) to reactivate their account. CC-BY terms. We probably don't have a screenshot of how the sign-up page looked back then.
  • 2012: Licence change.
  • 2012-2018: Nothing presented to people signing-up for an OSM account. No explicit checkbox with ToS. We did have contributor terms, which were shown as part of the migration process, but not the log-in flow.
  • Before 2018 (GRPR): No privacy policy. Not agreed to any terms.
  • After 2018: People signing-up for an OSM account get "By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use, privacy policy and contributor terms".
  • 2019: People signing-up for an OSM account get the checkbox to agree to the ToS.

On terms

  • Unclear if there were terms before 2018 and if there was a clause about updating them.

Notice of ToS change at the time (2018)

  • At the time of change, it would be expected that we would have emailed existing OSM account holders, notifying them of the updated terms. This email would mention that continued use of the service after a specified number of days, would constitute agreement to the new terms.
  • LWG members do not remember receiving such a notice at the time.
  • The text appears somewhere now.
  • Unless they received notice of the change of terms, people who signed up between 2012 and 2018 are not covered are not covered by the new terms. They wouldn't have to click anywhere, just receive the notice.
  • If the original ToS did not specify something along the lines of "we will give you [x days] notice and if you keep using the service, you accept", then it is debatable if we could update via notice.
  • We have to presume that the people who signed-up before 2018 did not get a notice of the terms update - so the update is not binding on them.
    • Suggestion: We would have to "gate" the people who signed up between 2012 to 2018, in a similar way we "gate" the pre-2012 sign-ups. Everyone who hasn't agreed to terms, has to be locked down.

Changes to the current terms

XI. Changes to Services or Terms
"We may modify these Terms and other terms related to your use of the Services (like our Privacy Policy) from time to time, by posting the changed terms on the OSMF website. All changes will be effective immediately upon posting to the OSMF website unless they specify a later date. Changes will not apply retroactively. Please check these Terms periodically for changes -- your continued use of the Services after new Terms become effective constitutes your binding acceptance of the new Terms."

This is putting the obligation on the user to check the website - which is not enforceable. You have to give notice to people.

On API access

The terms seem to seem to apply to both the website and the API. Most APIs require some sort of authentication, e.g. a token tied to an account. If someone is using our API anonymously, we have no way to give them notice, e.g. via email. The Foundation's legal risks related to GDPR from anonymous API access would depend on whether any private information can be accessed.

Suggestions

  • Include a section in the terms that explains the process for updating the terms.
  • Ensure that access to personal information is only available behind a login.
  • For people with OSM accounts registered before 2018, if f they do not agree to the new terms, they should not have access to personal information.

On other platforms

  • Facebook: would not give unlimited, anonymous access to its API.
  • There should be a way of displaying information to non-authenticated users.
  • Reddit: you can look at posts without being logged-in. People are choosing to post publicly and they have agreed to Reddit's terms. So, there is access to the post's content, but not to the metadata associated with the user's activity.

On planet files

  • We currently offer public planet files for download without a log-in. These files have some fields stripped.
  • Planet files include timestamps of OSM edits.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Timestamps are probably not personal information.

Action item: Minh Nguyễn to reply to Anton that the 2012-2018 cohort of osm.org sign-ups should be treated the same as the pre-2012 group.

Minh disconnected approximately 32 minutes after start.


From Operations – Releasing snapshot .csv files of OSM user profile data

The OWG requested release of snapshot CSV files containing both spam and ham (legitimate user) data for training anti-spam models. We would have to document our justification. Most/all the information in the ham.csv is included in the planet files. They do not contain email addresses.

Suggestions

  • Add a restriction on who can access these files. For example, include text next to the download links stating that by downloading, you agree to use the information solely to assist OWG in identifying spam.
  • Require a non-disclosure agreement, as then we can also share IP addresses, which are potentially useful.
    • The goal is to release these files widely.

Decision

Okay to release with some language limiting purpose -"By downloading these files, you agree to the OSMF Terms of Use and privacy policy, and agree to use the information in these files solely to assist OWG with anti-spam and other OSM improvement purposes approved by OWG."


Queries to legal-questions


Infocasas

Update: Per request of LWG, the maintainer of Overpass is moving to block Infocasas.


Large copyright infringement (Dopper - water taps) Ticket#2025040310000645

Dermot emailed Dopper yesterday (2025-06-15) regarding our assertions based on ODbL. Dermot contacted them at a general email address, which redirected him to a feedback form.

If there is no reply in a few days, we could try to find people working there.


Using Regione Toscana WMS services Ticket#2025041010000202

Conclusion: This agreement has expired, as it lasted only for 3 years and the part specific to OSM was about Wikimedia sharing its information with the government.


Data Working Group - OSMtoday, via legal@

Tom Lee nudged OSMtoday during this call.


Japanese government's PDL license, via legal@

Satoshi IIDA provided an English translation of Japan's Public Data License 1.0.

LWG's position
Japan's Public Data License 1.0 appears compatible at baseline level, as long as any additional requirements are not problematic. Satoshi reported that the additional information sections attached to particular data sets tend to be written in Japanese.

LWG processing

  • Case-by-case review will be needed initially for Japanese licences based on Japan's Public Data License 1.0. Once repeatable patterns are identified - as was done for Canada - we could provide guidance for licences identical to a single licence, without needing extensive LWG review.
  • A lot of help will be needed, as they will not be in English.

Suggestion by Satoshi: publish an OSMF a page for Japan, like for Canada.

New page: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/PDL_Japan_and_local_variants


Forwarded by DWG - Redacted

This topic was redacted from the minutes, as decided by the LWG during their July meeting.


Is "Korea Open Government License Type 1" safe to be imported into OSM?, via legal@

There are 4 different types of Korea Open Government License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_Open_Government_License, with type 1 allowing commercial use and distribution of derived works. It's very similar to CC-BY. Help from a Korean speaker will be needed to determine whether it has the DRM or the attribution issues.

  • There's no reason to think that "Korea Open Government License Type 1" is similar to CC-BY-SA.
  • CC-BY-SA is very unusual for a government data set.

> "The data in this changeset was mapped based on publicly available information provided by the Seoul Open Data Plaza (서울열린데이터광장). Source: https://data.seoul.go.kr/"

It looks like this is created by the sole municipality and there's substantial risk that they're doing this in a way that it can't be exported.

On import

  • Mateusz Konieczny asked on the changeset whether the mapper was aware of the import guidelines.
  • The import issue is under DWG’s remit.

On Korea Open Government License Type 1

Action item

Kathleen to write back that the "Korea Open Government License Type 1" is likely compatible with ODbL, but we need much better documentation to reach a conclusion.


Angebot für die Benutzung Ihre OpenSourceMap Karten, Ticket#2025051610000226


Failure to attribute, Townmaps.ie

Action item: Dermot to reply using the LWG template in OTRS.


Any other business

Single sign on and Apple log-in

Somebody opened a pull request on the OSM website repository https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/2799#issuecomment-2847412646 and the OWG mentioned that the PR will be merged if the LWG says it is needed.

  • One of the things that sign up with Apple allows you to do, is to "hide" behind a non typical email address.
  • If there's no drawback, it might be a good thing to have.
  • Requires much time from someone to implement it, plus GBP 79/year.
  • We have access through FOSSGIS.
  • If OWG do not want to do it, it is within their power.
  • There does not seem to be a legal blocker or contractual imperative to support this.

Conclusion: Any issues are technical, not LWG ones.


Scheduling 2025 meetings

The LWG set the following meetings for 2025:

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 20 minutes after start.