Brand-Questions

 

Hi -

I'm writing to ask about the specifics of the terms of use of your shapefile data found at: https://gis.dot.state.oh.us/tims/Data/Download

The OpenStreetMap (OSM) community is currently making a push to add Ohio Township boundaries to its maps and would like to use your township boundary data to do so.

OSM Ohio is very interested in working with your agency to make sure the OSM community is abiding by your terms of use and also complying with its own goals and guidelines. We have reviewed the terms of use found at: hhttps://www.transportation.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/odot/help-center/privacy-notice-and-policies and believe they might not be compatible with our license terms.

We would like to know if you could provide OSM with a waiver for your commercial use restrictions.

As background, across the United States, there are clear trends toward implementing permissive Open Data policies. The federal government has published a variety of GIS datasets at its data.gov site: http://geo.data.gov/geoportal/catalog/search/browse/browse.page. States like Oregon (http://www.oregon.gov/Pages/datamoderation.aspx), cities like New York (http://nycopendata.pediacities.com/wiki/index.php/Local_Law_11_of_2012) and many other governments (http://wiki.civiccommons.org/Open_Data_Policy) are implementing or planning to implement Open Data policies. Among these trends are removing restrictions on commercial reuse of this public data and relaxation of source attribution requirements.

Many local agencies have found that OSM can be a valuable resource for their local communities and businesses. OSM is also a way to ensure that publicly-funded data is being used as widely as possible and to support the general public and local commerce.

If you'd like to learn more about OSM's license, you can read about it here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright.

We are available for phone conversations or discussions to answer any questions you might have related to this request.

Regards,
Zachary Prachar
Local OSM Representative

https://www.openstreetmap.org
http://localosmgroup.tld