Background on the OpenStreetMap Foundation's GeOsm trademark agreement
Posted by Jean-Marc Liotier on 24 May 2021 in English.In December 2020 the Licensing Working Group (LWG) received an inquiry regarding GeOsm and its trademark status. As GeOsm contains “OSM” which is a trademark of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, it comes under purview of our licensing policy. This was a topic of the January 2021 LWG meeting and Kathleen Lu (LWG) reached out to Willy Franck Sob, the main operator of GeOsm, to study its application.
GeOsm is a portal for distributing free geographic data. Its goal is to make OpenStreetMap data and other open data more easily accessible, especially to users in developing countries. A Cameroonian-led project, it already offers national data for 21 African countries - but it has potential for wider horizons.
Considering the compatibility of GeOsm’s ethos with OpenStreetMap, the LWG suggested that the OSMF should come to an agreement with GeOsm. Within that framework, Jean-Marc Liotier (Board Member) drafted an agreement (see annexed PDF) to define under what conditions the OSMF will permit the GeOsm trademark. Most of the clauses are typical generic points of a trademark licence agreement, but some are specific to OpenStreetMap and will interest our members most:
- The GeOsm trademark shall only be used as the brand for distributing geographic data under open data licenses as defined by the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Open Definition published at http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/
- A major part of the data distributed by the GeOsm must originate from OpenStreetMap.
- Any code for the GeOsm site used as a point of distribution must be published under an open source license according to the Open Source Definition published by the Open Source Initiative.
- Any code necessary for converting OpenStreetMap data to the format consumed by the software of the site used as a point of distribution must be published under an open source license according to the Open Source Definition published by the Open Source Initiative.
- No proprietary data shall be distributed by GeOsm.
So, on top of Willy Franck’s communicative enthusiasm about OpenStreetMap in the African context, this trademark license gives the OSMF a solid guarantee that its brand will not be tainted by diverging interests.
Beyond these defensive measures, this formal agreement is also a nod to a community-led African initiative - free software developed by African leaders is not yet a common occurence, and the OSMF looks forward to GeOsm developing original approaches to bring OpenStreetMap data to new audiences and make them participants.
The OSMF took advantage of Jean-Marc’s presence in Cameroon to participate in a formal signing ceremony, with representatives of the Ministry of Local Development and Ministry of Housing and Urban Development in attendance. They confirmed the strong interest of their government in collaborative approaches to geographic data and the technological appropriation of geographical information systems through local initiatives.