Every course in Yard Buddy is built from public, openly licensed sources. Nothing is traced from a commercial map. This page says exactly what we used, what we owe back, and how you can get the data yourself.
The shape of each hole — the fairway, the green, bunkers, water, and the line of play — comes from OpenStreetMap, a map built by volunteers around the world.
Course data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0.
The ODbL asks that anyone who publishes an improved version of the data share it back on the same terms. We do. The course files this app downloads are published under the same Open Database License, free to anyone:
You may copy, change, and redistribute these files, including commercially, as long as you credit OpenStreetMap and keep the same license on anything you publish from them.
Trees along each hole are found in photographs from the National Agriculture Imagery Program, flown by the United States Department of Agriculture. Imagery from this program is in the public domain, free of copyright and free to use. We are grateful for it.
Par and hole numbering come from OpenStreetMap. Where a course publishes its own scorecard or hole-by-hole guide we read it to confirm a number, and every course runs through automatic checks before it ships — anything that fails is held back. We do not copy their maps or artwork.
We do not take any measurement, outline, or coordinate from Google Maps, Google Earth, or any other commercial mapping service. Their terms forbid tracing roads, buildings, and terrain, and we respect that.
We do occasionally open a satellite view to check with our own eyes that a course sits where we think it does. Nothing seen there is ever written into a course file — that rule is written into our tools.
Tap the accuracy reading in the app and choose Report a problem, or write to us. If a hole is wrong in OpenStreetMap itself, anyone can fix it there and the correction reaches everyone.