Licensing of Overture-generated fields in Places (GERS id, taxonomy, confidence) and the basis of the per-source declarations

[jemetres]

Hello,

We are evaluating the Places theme for a product that stores place observations and shows them to end users, and we have two licensing questions we could not answer from the public documentation alone. We would rather ask than assume.

1. Which license applies to Overture-generated fields in the Places theme, particularly the GERS id, version, basic_category, taxonomy, and confidence, when those values are generated or transformed by Overture rather than copied from an upstream source? May downstream users store, redistribute, and use each of these fields under CDLA Permissive 2.0?

Context for the question: the attribution page lists nine data providers, each with its own license, and Overture itself is not among them. In the data, however, every place feature we examined carries a sources[] entry with dataset = Overture and license = CDLA-Permissive-2.0. We would like to know whether that field value is intended as the licensing statement for Overture-generated content, or as descriptive metadata only.

2. Does Overture have the necessary written rights from each listed Places data provider to publish and permit downstream use of that provider's data under the license shown on Overture's official attribution page? We are not requesting copies of private agreements, only confirmation of Overture's authority to publish under those stated licenses. If that confirmation cannot be provided publicly, please identify the public documentation that downstream users are expected to rely on, or direct us to the appropriate official licensing contact.

Three procedural requests, so that we can record the answer properly:

• Could you point us to the official channel for licensing questions, if this discussion forum is not it?
• Could whoever answers indicate in what capacity they are replying — community maintainer, Overture staff, or an authorized representative of the Foundation?
• Where a public, versioned document already answers any of the above, a reference to it is more useful to us than a summary, since we need to record the source we relied on.

Thank you.

[ejdanforth]

Hi jemetres , thank you for the questions - acknowledging receipt. I can help provide an answer. It may take some time if counsel needs to be consulted.