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Comment by neilv

7 days ago

Small objections to the licensing terms, and the name...

I've recently been considering making my own open source nutrition app, (since every single one I've looked at seems to either violate my privacy&security, or is designed/works very poorly), but the available "open" nutrition info databases for bootstrapping have seemed poor.

So I looked at the license of this database, and the idea of making it "open" is good and maybe appropriate. But the attribution requirements to promote this other, commercial, product are a little annoying. And could also be a little confusing in app store listings.

> Attribution Requirements: If you display or use any data from this dataset, you must provide clear attribution to "OpenNutrition" with a link to https://www.opennutrition.app in:

> * Every interface where data is displayed

> * Application store listings

> * Your website

> * Legal/about sections

Additionally, I've soured on single companies that call themselves "open". "Open" has a few-decades history in computers, as everyone realized the dangers and costs of proprietary lock-ins, and so created concepts such as "open systems" and "open standards". Appropriating the "open" term for a single company, for something more proprietary than open (like the very proprietary OpenAI that's mentioned many times in https://www.opennutrition.app/about ), rubs a bit the wrong way.

4 comments

neilv

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joshdickson  7 days ago

The licensing terms are identical to similar projects including OpenFoodFacts (which also has an app) and OpenStreetMap, see:

https://wiki.openfoodfacts.org/ODBL_License

You may disagree with each of those projects as well, but, I am following long-standing licensing in this space. I also have used some OFF data for product naming, and as a result, their terms state I have to maintain their license.

Creating these databases involves a tremendous amount of time and effort, and it would not make sense for me to make this data available to commercial entities to use without attribution. The alternative is not a MIT-licensed dataset, it is no dataset.

  • neilv  7 days ago

    The two you cite, OpenFoodFacts and OpenStreetMap are non-profit/not-for-profit, known for their databases, not for competing commercial apps.

    I appreciate the difficulty of building a good database. Can you say why you created a new one, rather than starting with OpenFoodFacts? (Was it quality issues? Too hard to update? You wanted additional info? You didn't want their licensing terms? You wanted the advertising boost?)