Licensing Derivative Works or How to Have Your Cake and Eat it Too

The OpenGeoData Blog had a very interesting post last week on what they called the cake test.  From the blog:

“What is the Cake Test? Easy: A set of geodata, or a map, is libre only if somebody can give you a cake with that map on top, as a present.”

I actually like this test.  It is simple and easy to see.  Can you download geodata and have your local baker reproduce it with icing.  But there is a little problem with their definition; it is way too narrow.  Most of the data in the world is not libre or free.  It is either locked up at one of the various stages of local and federal government, or it can be owned by a company/individual who doesn’t want to give it away for free.  The cake test does work in this aspect, if you can take a dataset and put it on a map without signing anything or paying for anything, it is most likely libre.  But the reality of the situation is that most data isn’t free and probably won’t be in the near term.  This means we need another way to license geodata on top of that cake.

Derivative Work from geodata is very liberating

We at WeoGeo have been thinking about this for a long time.  In fact we realize that without a good license for allowing users to create derivative products from geodata, that information is probably going to stay locked up behind restrictive licensing and cause people to create their own datasets without them.  Our WeoGeo License Agreements for Providers and Users both oversee how content can be licensed to allow derivative works to be created.  If you’d like to use this aerial image of download Calgary, you will get a license that allows you to create the single use from this aerial which would include putting it on a cake for a (yummy) mapping party.

Now of course this aerial isn’t libre, and you are still bound by the license agreement. However this license also explicitly states that you could sell this cake as a derivative product to others and a potion of that sale would go back to ATLIS Geo.  But what it does do is give users of geodata a clear and consistent way to actually use content to create derivative products and still give the original rights holder a cut of future sales.  So if you list data on the WeoGeo Market, you can give buyers of your geodata the rights to create derivative work based upon it and gain an additional revenues from those downstream sales.  Remember EVS-Islands and DigitalGlobe from a while back?  All he wanted to do is license derivative work off of the imagery.  Because DigitalGlobe has no such license, we can’t enjoy his hard work and DigitalGlobe gives up some revenue that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The cake test as proposed by the OpenGeoData blog is an all or nothing test that results in the many users gaining little benefit.  Sure it is nice that OpenStreetMap, TIGER and other datasets can be thrown on top of a cake, but most data available to users is not libre.  If the owners of this data were to enable derivative works using the WeoGeo Content License Agreement or similar type licenses, you can only imagine some of the really great derivative products people would be able to create and help to continue funding further development of these datasets.  Don’t we all want our geodata to pass the cake test and ensure that you have something tasty to celebrate on Geography Awareness Week?