[tor-dev] Changes to accessing and using MaxMind's databases

[Nick Mathewson]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 8:25 AM Karsten Loesing <karsten at torproject.org> wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> When trying to update tor's geoip databases the other day I found that
> MaxMind's GeoLite2 database is not available for download anymore. The
> reason is:
>
> https://blog.maxmind.com/2019/12/18/significant-changes-to-accessing-and-using-geolite2-databases/
>
> We do not have a MaxMind account (yet). As of now, we cannot update
> tor's geoip files nor the files used by Onionoo.
>
> Should we try to get somebody who knows more about licenses and legal
> stuff to review their GeoLite2 EULA and tell us if it's okay for us to
> sign up for a MaxMind account? A possible downside would be that whoever
> wants to verify that we didn't mess with their database when converting
> it to our format would have to sign up for an account, too.
>
> An alternative is to find another, truly open data source than MaxMind
> databases (#25542, #26585). However, this could eat up more time than we
> currently have available, and we should have something ready in a few
> weeks from now. I'm not sure how we would squeeze this into the metrics
> team schedule, so we might need help with this.
>
> Thoughts on the two alternatives? What else did I miss?

There's a debian-legal thread here:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2020/01/threads.html

>From what I can tell, Maxmind's new EULA is not compatible with
redistributing the information as free software, but of course I am
not a lawyer.

-- 
Nick