OpenStreetMap offline tiles - licensing issue

Question

In my application, I want to bind Devexpress WPF Map control to a bunch of tiles. I do not need any deep zoom level - something up to 5-6 zoom levels would be acceptable.

Is it allowed to legally download such tiles from OpenStreetMap?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The tiles produced by the main OSM tile server are CC-BY-SA-2 licensed so you are legally able to download them, share them, etc, as long as you abide by the standard Creative Commons licensing requirements (such as the attribution statement).

However, when accessing the tileserver you must abide by the tile usage policy shown here - in particular, "bulk downloading is strongly discouraged" because of the bandwidth impact.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_usage_policy