There’s no attribution that I can see on the second embedded map on the page (on mobile). A honking great Radar logo, but no OSM attribution.
This trend of “our branding takes priority over the required attribution for the free map data we’re using, but hey, they’re a little nonprofit so can’t afford to sue us” really ticks me off. Mapbox started it as a calculated move, and since then others have followed claiming it’s “the standard”.
Considering Mapbox's history of slight misunderstandings with the Openstreetman community, I would have thought that the touchy subject of attribution would have been dealt with more carefully...
It is hidden under the little ? in the bottom right corner. That is a very meagre interpretation of the attribution guidelines. To help combat the idea that a map must be made by some megacorp to be viable, visibility of OpenStreetMap is important.
ellenhp: Why not start with the attribution toggled open, or some alternative way to highlight the map data's provenance?
I see "(c) Mapbox (c) OpenStreetMap" in the bottom right of the map preview, so I assume it will also be part of the export/print. "OpenStreetMap contributors" and another clickable link in the footer would be better but I see reasonable effort in/on the end product.
edit: reading through other comments it's possible the author added the attribution only recently (after OPs comment)
Might be missing something, but I'm fairly certain that Mapbox requires you to include attribution here. They also prohibit printing for commercial purposes, although that's lifted for enterprise plans, which you might have.
Interesting, but I'm not sure that is dispositive. That company is credited for images even where they are obviously aerial. Google Maps images are an algorithmic mash-up of many sources, I imagine they credit partial or possible sources conservatively, to keep from omitting any potentially relevant rights.
In many tiles they don't credit anybody, so the absences of Google's own image credit doesn't mean anything. The first party does not need to credit themselves.
Yep, thank you and habi for bringing this up. Now, after learning the Attribution Guidelines more thoroughly, I'm updating the app to show the attribution directly on a map and fading it as specified by the guidelines.
It appears they've had these maps in their desktop products since about April 2010, so this explanation doesn't make any sense. (And if it did, then a simple switch to turn on attribution at launch time would have worked too).
If the government is required to release the data as public domain; then it's integrated into OpenStreetMap which is copyleft; then a correction is made to OpenStreetMap; the correction can't be merged back into the public domain data.
Thus the copyleft project, in their attempts to stop people freeloading on their work without contributing back, have freeloaded on someone else's work without contributing back.
Such fictitious places appear in all derived (and original) maps, and is not by itself an indication of ripping off - it's only used as evidence when someone claims that their map is not copied. It will also show up for everyone who has legitimately acquired the map data.
In particulal, the original article mentions an acquisition path how most likely that map has made it's way legally to google.
This trend of “our branding takes priority over the required attribution for the free map data we’re using, but hey, they’re a little nonprofit so can’t afford to sue us” really ticks me off. Mapbox started it as a calculated move, and since then others have followed claiming it’s “the standard”.
But in this case I’ll assume good faith for now and hope it’s fixed. A simple “© OSM” would be fine.
reply