Commercial use of Geonames Data

[Prateek]

Hello All,

I have a question regarding making commercial use of Geonames dataset. It is perhaps more of a legal question rather than a technical question.

 

Geonames by itself uses Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which allows commercial use after attribution. 

However on the data source webpage 

http://www.geonames.org/data-sources.html 

It gives a list of external data sources/datasets which have been utilized for GeoNames Gazetteer. Some of these sources such as Wikipedia are not in  Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

My question is,

Is there a core part of geonames which can be used commercially under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License? I imagine such a part would exclude Wikipedia data and other datasets which use other licenses, since they are under different license? If yes, can you please let me know or correct my understanding?

Thank  You

Prateek 

[Marc Wick]

Hi Prateek

The gazetteer data files can be used commercially under Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 License.

Wikipedia was listed there as source in the sense that it might have
been used to check capitals of countries and similar. I have removed it
as a source as it seems to lead to misunderstandings.

Best Regards

Marc

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[Prateek]

Thanks for the reply.

The data source page says "Datasources used by GeoNames in the GeoNames Gazetteer". 

Some of the sources in the list utilize different license. For example:  UK Department for Transport, uses Crown Copyright (which you mention). 

Similarly hotels.com is mentioned as another source. On their page it says in Prohibited "1. use this Website or its contents for any commercial purpose;"

I am confused how (if) these license conditions apply on use of Geonames data?  

I am not a lawyer so I apologize for my naivety. I have contacted one and I was advised to contact the creators and clarify. 

Can you please clarify?

Thanks

Prateek

[Marc Wick]

> The data source page says "Datasources used by GeoNames in the GeoNames
> Gazetteer".
>
> Some of the sources in the list utilize different license. For example:
> UK Department for Transport, uses Crown Copyright (which you mention).

"These terms have been aligned to be interoperable with any Creative
Commons Attribution Licence, which covers copyright, and Open Data
Commons Attribution License, which covers database rights and applicable
copyrights."

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/

> Similarly hotels.com is mentioned as another source. On their page it
> says in Prohibited "1. use this Website or its contents for any
> commercial purpose;"
>
> I am confused how (if) these license conditions apply on use of Geonames
> data?
> I am not a lawyer so I apologize for my naivety. I have contacted one
> and I was advised to contact the creators and clarify.
>
> Can you please clarify?

For the hotel sources mentioned on the above page, GeoNames is using
hotel name and lat/lng. The sources used have all given their permission
for this fields to be included in the GeoNames gazetteer in January
2007. The data also dates back to this time.


Marc