944750 - Missing OpenStreetMap attribution

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Richard Fairhurst]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/28.0.1500.71 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Visit a mozilla.org page with a map, e.g. http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contact/spaces/


Actual results:

Map (containing OpenStreetMap data) has a generic "Terms & Feedback" link at the bottom right


Expected results:

Map should have "© OpenStreetMap contributors" credit placed in the corner of the map itself, as required by OpenStreetMap's terms at http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright

Comment 1

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

Thanks for the bug. 

The new contact page launched with an OSM credit at the bottom of the page [0], but it isn't the map overlay required by the terms [1]. 

Mapbox provides the existing Terms & Feedback overlay now present, but doesn't seem to provide an obvious (or documented) way to override it [2]. We could update the existing credit [0] with different text before the end of the day, but that won't address this bug. It's probably better just to ask for patience while we investigate. Of course, if anyone wants to submit a PR for this it would be quite welcome!

As an aside, there might be a meta bug here for Mapbox, since it would seem to affect every customer implementing OSM for the first time. Something like, "Attribute OSM in the default attribution overlay; document attribution requirements and API." From our initial investigation, it appears we'll have to hack in this attribution.

[0] http://bit.ly/where_we_credit_osm
[1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
[2] There is an #attribution link in the API docs (side nav) but it appears to go nowhere: https://www.mapbox.com/developers/api/#Attribution

Comment 2

[Richard Fairhurst]

That's great, thanks. No problem being patient (building a map of the world from scratch gives you a kind of stoic attitude ;) ).

Comment 3

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Found a way to add it directly through Leaflet :)

PR opened here:

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/pull/1464

Comment 4

[[github robot]]

Commits pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/4718a994ab934b3711bed1f8ffe2d55e91aed979
[fix bug 944750] Missing OpenStreetMap attribution

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/2ba6d94bc10cad196c0398ca099d8bff8731b76a
Merge pull request #1464 from alexgibson/bug-944750-missing-openstreetmap-attribution

[fix bug 944750] Missing OpenStreetMap attribution

Comment 5

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

Mapbox says that the Terms & Feedback link present by default on the maps they serve is completely sufficient, since it links to a page with clear attribution (https://www.mapbox.com/about/maps/). 

Richard: Do you think Mapbox has an incorrect understanding of the attribution requirements?

Comment 6

[Richard Fairhurst]

Yep.

OSM clearly states on its copyright page (osm.org/copyright) that "We require that you use the credit '© OpenStreetMap contributors'" and that "For a browsable electronic map, the credit should appear in the corner of the map". There's no option provided for third-parties to remove that requirement.

It's well established that map APIs fulfil the attribution requirements of their data providers with on-map credits: for example, a typical Google Maps attribution string is "Map data ©2013 GeoBasis-DE/BKG (©2009), Google". Given that OpenStreetMap is a user-facing brand (it needs to attract contributors for the map to get better, and brand awareness is an important part of attracting contributors), unlike GeoBasis-DE/BKG, there is a strong rationale for OSM's stated attribution requirements. Indeed, it's pretty restrained compared to the large on-map logo of Google themselves (now their own major data provider, of course).

Looking at the full legalese in OSM's licence (the Open Database Licence, http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/), the relevant clause is 4.3:

"...if you Publicly Use a Produced Work, You must include a notice associated with the Produced Work reasonably calculated to make any Person that uses, views, accesses, interacts with, or is otherwise exposed to the Produced Work aware that Content was obtained from the Database..."

"Reasonably calculated" should be read in the context of what users expect to find based on their experience with other maps. As the Google example illustrates, the majority experience is on-map attribution. I believe this is the rationale behind carrying this through to OSM's attribution requirement.

If OSM wants to change its attribution requirements (and there might be an argument for that) that's a conversation that the OSM community can have, and it'd be great to have input from both Mapbox and data consumers such as Mozilla on this. For now, however, the osm.org/copyright page is pretty unambiguous.

(None of this is to detract from the great work that Mapbox have done and indeed continue to do!)

Comment 7

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

The patch in comment 4 will go live sometime soon, but it is probably not the last PR related to this bug. We will have updated code/content as soon as we have enough information to craft it.

Richard: Does the approach taken by Github [0] satisfy your understanding of the requirements? 

[0] https://github.com/smartchicago/chicago-atlas/blob/master/db/import/zipcodes.geojson

Comment 8

[raymond [:retornam] (inactive)]

fixed on stage https://www.allizom.org/en-US/contact/spaces/

Comment 9

[raymond [:retornam] (inactive)]

on prod http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contact/spaces/

Comment 10

[Richard Fairhurst]

That's great - thanks all.

Justin: the Github approach is interesting and clever; that said, it's not what the /copyright page illustrates and I'd have a hard time arguing that it's a comparable level of prominence. But I'd defer to the OpenStreetMap Foundation's Licensing Working Group as to what they consider acceptable.