Not legal advice. This records a finding with sources so it is dated and on the record;
the license itself names 3dwarehouse-tou@sketchup.com as the route for uses it does not
cover.
What we ship
public/twins/chatt/models/ contains 129 individual .glb files sampled from 3D
Warehouse, committed to a public repository, and rendered at their true geographic
coordinates in /chatt — a geolocated 3D map of Chattanooga with lat/long readout,
OpenStreetMap footprints and USGS terrain.
What the General Model License says
Two clauses look directly relevant:
you may not "aggregate any content… for redistribution, or use or distribute any content
obtained from 3D Warehouse in a mapping or geographic application"
users may not "sell, offer to sell, make or distribute any individual Model on a
standalone basis, unless you are the Developer of such Model or otherwise authorized"
A geolocated city map built from aggregated Warehouse models, redistributed as individual
model files in a public repo, appears to engage both.
What the license does permit: incorporating models into a Combined Work that
"includes substantial additional content to the original Model", commercial use, and
derivative works made by "substantially modifying geometry, color, or other attributes".
The abstraction pass (scripts/warehouse/abstract-glb.mjs) does modify geometry
substantially — whether that clears the bar is exactly the question a lawyer should answer,
not me.
Attribution
The license contains no attribution requirement. Credit is courtesy, not compliance.
We currently give none: manifest.provenance (rendered at src/stage/Hud.tsx:663) reads
"© OpenStreetMap · USGS 3DEP 1m · TDOT Aerial Surveys · Microsoft Buildings · USGS 3DEP
Lidar" — every data source except the 129 models and their authors. Being courteous here
costs nothing and is being fixed regardless of the licensing question.
Why it matters beyond this repo
ScriptHammer is a template meant to be forked. Anyone forking it inherits these assets
and this question, which is what prompted the owner to ask what licensing a private fork
would take.
Options
- Request written consent from Trimble for the geographic-application use.
- Replace the sampled models with assets under a license that permits it (CC0/CC-BY sources,
or own-authored geometry).
- Keep the models out of the repo and fetch them per-user at runtime, which changes who is
doing the redistributing.
- Confirm with counsel that the abstraction pass makes each model a derivative work and the
city a Combined Work with substantial additional content.
Owner's call for now: keep shipping while this is reviewed, and add the credits UI.
Sources
Not legal advice. This records a finding with sources so it is dated and on the record;
the license itself names
3dwarehouse-tou@sketchup.comas the route for uses it does notcover.
What we ship
public/twins/chatt/models/contains 129 individual.glbfiles sampled from 3DWarehouse, committed to a public repository, and rendered at their true geographic
coordinates in
/chatt— a geolocated 3D map of Chattanooga with lat/long readout,OpenStreetMap footprints and USGS terrain.
What the General Model License says
Two clauses look directly relevant:
A geolocated city map built from aggregated Warehouse models, redistributed as individual
model files in a public repo, appears to engage both.
What the license does permit: incorporating models into a Combined Work that
"includes substantial additional content to the original Model", commercial use, and
derivative works made by "substantially modifying geometry, color, or other attributes".
The abstraction pass (
scripts/warehouse/abstract-glb.mjs) does modify geometrysubstantially — whether that clears the bar is exactly the question a lawyer should answer,
not me.
Attribution
The license contains no attribution requirement. Credit is courtesy, not compliance.
We currently give none:
manifest.provenance(rendered atsrc/stage/Hud.tsx:663) reads"© OpenStreetMap · USGS 3DEP 1m · TDOT Aerial Surveys · Microsoft Buildings · USGS 3DEP
Lidar" — every data source except the 129 models and their authors. Being courteous here
costs nothing and is being fixed regardless of the licensing question.
Why it matters beyond this repo
ScriptHammer is a template meant to be forked. Anyone forking it inherits these assets
and this question, which is what prompted the owner to ask what licensing a private fork
would take.
Options
or own-authored geometry).
doing the redistributing.
city a Combined Work with substantial additional content.
Owner's call for now: keep shipping while this is reviewed, and add the credits UI.
Sources