Response to "Why Book Corners won’t sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap" – Pietervdvn's blog

Response to "Why Book Corners won’t sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap"

Written by

pietervdvn

in

OpenStreetMap

Hi all,

There was a bit of a stir on Hacker News recently around bookcorners.org – yet another website to register public bookcases.

I’m a heavy OpenStreetMap-contributor and made an OpenStreetMap-editor called MapComplete, which you can use to add public bookcases into OpenStreetMap (but it contains many other thematic maps as well).

I’m writing this blogpost as a reply to the blog post from Andrea Grandi on his choice to not contribute data back and why he made this decision.

Let’s dive in!

What is OpenStreetMap?

OpenStreetMap is in the first place a big database with geographical data. As long as it is verifiable in the field, you may add this data. As such, there is a wealth of data about streets, buildings, rivers, railways, bridges, … But data about smaller and more humble objects are just as welcome: toilets, defibrillators, bookcases, benches, memorials, surveillance cameras …

Everyone may make changes, there are many tools to do this. Note that all contributions are tied to a contributor account: it gives the possibility to reach out to this contributor in case of suspicious activity. Often, the world is weird and the contributor added the correct data. If not, the contributor learned something and will hopefully not make the same mistake later.

Everyone is allowed to reuse the data for free, but our ODbL-license dictates that one must give attribution and that changes to the data must be shared under the same conditions. This latter clause is important in the context of BookCorners.

What is bookcorners.org

Bookcorners.org is a vibecoded website that has their own database of bookcases, initially seeded by OpenStreetMap-data. This is important, as this means that the contagious OSM license triggers.

What is wrong with Bookcorners.org?

I have a few grieves with bookcorners.org, which I’ll list below.

Andrea: sorry for the harsh criticism!

Yet another database…

First of all, there are already plenty of websites and databases listing the public bookcases. A five minute search gave me:

https://littlefreelibrary.org/ (which charges you $50 to be listed, closed data, trademarked)

https://openbookcase.de/ (partial OSM-derivative, data ODbL, open source)

BuchschrankFinder and Lesestunden.de (didn’t check the license, only in Germany)

[https://www.boite-a-lire.com/] (didn’t check the license, only in France)

Boekenruilkast.be (only Belgium, permission to import into OSM)

And at last, many OSM-based ones (such as https://book-exchange.zottelig.ch/, https://mapcomplete.org/bookcases, … and many more)

This is one of my major grievances: yet another database, yet more fragmentation of data, more fragmentation of the people contributing useful data…

In my opinion, OSM is a natural fit for this type of data, especially because the data is carried over to many other applications (such as OsmAnd, Organic Maps, CoMaps, …)

Legal uncertainty

I’ve given bookcorners.org a spin and created an account. Granted, this was easy: I gave my email-address, username and chose a password; that’s it!

But there is an important step missing: a license agreement. Not a word on how my contributions will be used and under what license they’ll be shared. This is a legal risk.

I’m highlighting a quote from the blog post:

It would add credentials, production safeguards, audit and reconciliation code, community processes, licensing work , and a long-term support obligation.

The ‘licensing work’ is indeed completely missing, including on the website itself. This means that bookcorners.org doesn’t even have permission to republish the images that were uploaded to it! There should at least be a contributors agreement with people who create an account on the website. If a 3rd party wants to reuse those images, the situation is even more problematic. Right now, I must assume ‘all rights reserved’.

I also found the following quote baffling:

There are also important licensing questions. A user’s permission to send a library to OSM is not automatically the same as having a sufficiently clear right to release that factual information under terms compatible with OSM

First of all, that is pretty much what "a user’s permission" should mean: the permission to send it to OSM.<br>If that is not clear, the wording of the bookcorners.org user agreement should be improved (that is: once that user agreement is written in the first place)

Second, bookcorners.org is obligated to re-release the data as ODbL. Bookcorners.org started with an export of OSM-data and builds upon this. Changes to this dataset – including new items – must be republished as ODbL.

To the credit of Andrea, the data dump is now available under ODbL. It thus seems that Andrea has navigated themselves into a legally dubious position this...