Saint Louis County, Missouri, has an open data site[1] with a collection of mosaics dating back to 1937. Super cool! I wanted to get some opinions from the community, though, on whether or not they’re suitable for use in OpenHistoricalMap.
The website has this to say: “Open data is data that can be freely used, shared, and utilized by anyone. This data is provided by St. Louis County. You’ll find maps, applications, reports, tables, and more. Click below to explore all of the available data or explore by category.” If you then click the “Imagery” link and, subsequently, the “Historic Aerials” link, it reveals the viewer. In the viewer, though, the “license” dialog box is filled not with an explicit license but with disclaimers and a copyright notice. As a non-lawyer, this whole arrangement seems analogous to the 0BSD software license: copyright is asserted, and broad permissions are granted (the county’s open data “can be freely used, shared, and utilized by anyone”) subject only to some common disclaimers. But maybe it reads this way to me because I want it to
Anywho, I’m curious what others think about this source.
Local GIS departments in the U.S. fall into two categories: those that clutch their datasets as supposed profit centers, and those that cannot fathom putting any restrictions on what the taxpayers already paid for, other than to protect themselves against liability. Fortunately, the latter is much more common these days. The disclaimer isn’t particularly relevant to copyright. When you see the disclaimer where a copyright notice or license would be, that’s a good sign.
Unfortunately, despite the general assurances about open data being open, the imagery you found has an unclear copyright status. Missouri lacks a strong sunshine law that would put anything in the public domain. The application metadata repeats the disclaimer but then says “All rights reserved.” Newer layers indicate that the county contracted with a company to gather the imagery. You might be able to track down the original RFP to see if it requires a particular license. Older layers say the source is unknown, but maybe they have a good guess as to whether it was taken by a government agency.
If in doubt, it doesn’t hurt to ask. The rule of thumb is to keep it simple: start by identifying yourself as a volunteer for OHM and asking if there are any restrictions on reuse. If they can categorically say there are none, then it’s effectively in the public domain and you’re in good shape. Make sure you’re talking to someone who can represent the organization, not, say, the summer intern. I find that folks are slightly more willing to answer in the affirmative to someone asking on behalf of OHM than OSM, because OHM so obviously lacks a profit motive.
For a more informed view on the subject, check out this talk by a member of the OSMF’s Licensing Working Group:
I already 'd your post, but I had to come back and write a comment: thank you for the comprehensive response. I watched Lu’s presentation, and it stitched together so many things that I “knew” but hadn’t fully contextualized.
'd your post, but I had to come back and write a comment: thank you for the comprehensive response. I watched Lu’s presentation, and it stitched together so many things that I “knew” but hadn’t fully contextualized.