[OSGeodata] FOIA and VMAP1 anyone?

[Jo Walsh]

dear Ned,
On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 09:14:18AM -0400, Ned Horning wrote:
> I forgot to ask about the VMAP0 copyright issue. What exactly is the
> question? The license agreement is in the readme file. If there are
> questions about what can be done with these data isn't it an issue of
> interpretation of the license? Wouldn't a lawyer be a better place to start?

K, the question here is the extent to which datasets derived from
bits of VMap0, possibly combined with other more 'open' (in terms of
rights to freely re-use and redistribute) datasets, are subject to
'infection' in license terms by non-commercial use clause such as 
ESRI dictates for its 'intellectual property' within VMap0.

I agree this is partly a question for a lawyer; OpenStreetmap are also
grappling with the general question of 'derived works'. But this is
also a specific question for NGA because - 

* Markus mentioned in the last meeting he has seen some wording 
associated with VMap0 that suggested license restrictions did not
apply. I think this may have been a missing-context problem - for
us.mil 'Limited distribution' means something specific re. geodata -
but it makes sense to check.

* The VMap0 readmes are at once very specific and very vague about
exactly what is copyright ESRI in VMap0:

[[ These features are the Boundaries Coverage (bnd) edge features 
 representing administrative unit boundaries that have an FACC code 
 (f_code) of FA000 and an attribute value of 26 in 
 the USE field - First Order Administrative Division features.  Also
 included are Boundary face features with an FACC code (f_code) of FA001 
 and an  administrative unit name present in the NAM field.  Within the
 Reference  Library (rference) the Library Reference (libref), Place Name
 (placenam), and Political Boundary (polbnd) Coverages also contain intellectual
 property of ESRI. ]]

That political boundaries 'contain intellectual property of ESRI' is 
a broad answer for a lot of data, which in the worst case OSGeo would
be unable to redistribute if we wanted to maintain a "truly open" data
policy guaranteeing rights to reuse and redistribution without hindrance.

Maybe it's logic chopping to push it this far. Asking ESRI is an
interesting idea! I am curious now as to what their response would be.

> I'm no expert on these maters so maybe I'm missing the point?

Me neither! Perhaps formalised expertise is overestimated. Emphasis on
open license as guarantee of or constraint on freedom, is legally untested. 
An effort such as http://freedomdefined.org/Definition takes a
tangential approach. Like the Free Software Definition it very
specifically includes a clause "it *must not* limit commercial use of
the work" that must appply to free/open data.

I don't know how others feel about including non-commercial use
licensed data in an "open" geodata repository. I don't necessarily
want to spend a lot of time talking about it! (For personal preference
/ IANAL reasons, not dictatorial reasons ;) ) And that's the main
reason I would like to know, from NGA or ESRI, *exactly* what, not
just generally what, ESRI claims copyright on inside VMap0, so it
could if necessary be removed / replaced with other more 'open' sources.

cheers,


jo