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Hi, I would like to develop a commercial app for android and iOS. I already read the license of openstreetmaps and his API but it's not to clear for me. The idea is to download areas with tiles on the devices for offline use (like in Google maps) and to drape some homemade vectors layers below the tiles. I already read a similar topic posted in 2013, but since then I would like to make sure that nothing has changed in terms of license and conditions. Can i use OpenStreetMaps & OpenStreetMaps API for commercial apps on Android ? If yes, what i should do to use them legally? just putting a link to openstreetmaps on my app? Thanks |
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OpenStreetMap data is free for everyone to use. Our servers, however, are not. They are paid for by volunteers and donations. You should not use them for a commercial project unless you are planning very light usage. You can and will be blocked if your app makes non-trivial demands on our servers, at which point your customers will want a refund from you. (Besides, using people's donations to OSM to make money for yourself would be a sh**ty thing to do!) Instead, we encourage you to use OSM's data (downloadable from https://planet.osm.org/ ) to generate tiles on either your own servers or a third-party's. There are instructions for setting up your own server with OSM data at https://switch2osm.org/ . Or if you want to engage a third party, have a look at the product offerings from Thunderforest, Geofabrik, Mapbox, Stadia Maps or no doubt many many others. |
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Hi, welcome to OSM, we love to see our data being used! Please read https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright and the links given therein (in particular the ODbL). If not clear, please ask a lawyer. The community cannot give you a legally binding answer - still the license is what counts. Put simply, yes, it is not much more than "a link" which is required. Our data license was changed on 12th September 2012 to ODbL. So, the similar topic is still current. License unrelated stuff: Please note that the OpenStreetMap API is not meant for users of our data. It is for contributors (write access). See section "Finding out more" on https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright Please further note that downloading masses of tiles violates our https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/ because it drains much server resources. Please render your own map tiles (made from OSM data, of course) or rather use vector data and render the maps on the fly on the device (see how other map apps do it, and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Frameworks#Displaying_interactive_maps (note the "platform" and "vector" column)). |
please could you insert a link into your question text pointing to the "similar topic"? Thanks!