Practical GIS

Licenses

GADM's license is very restrictive. We are free to use the downloaded data for personal and research purposes but we cannot redistribute it or use it in commercial settings. Technically, it isn't open source data as it does not give the four freedoms of using, modifying, redistributing the original version, and redistributing the modified version without restrictions. That's why the example dataset doesn't contain GADM's version of Luxembourg.

There is another data source, called Natural Earth, which is truly open source but it offers data only for the first two levels and on a lower resolution. If you need some boundaries with the least effort, make sure you check it out at http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/.

GeoNames has ...