[OSM-legal-talk] CC Attribution Share Alike License with OSMF exception

[Michael Collinson]

At 01:59 PM 9/5/2008, Albertas Agejevas wrote:
>On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 12:07:28PM +0100, Brian Quinion wrote:
> > Been reading all the discussions for a while with growing frustration.
> >  I find my self mostly agreeing with the CC-By-SA license but I do
> > wish there was a way to easily provide exceptions to those
> > organisations wishing to make good use of the data but having problems
> > with the license.
> >
> > So my questions is this:  would it be possible for the contributors to
> > OSM (in addition to releasing the data as CC-By-SA) to also grant a
> > license to the OSMF to use the data for ANY purpose? and to be able to
> > in turn also license the data on other projects / organisations by
> > unanimous vote?
>
>You might want to take a look at the Zope Public Licence -- its
>essence is that when any code is checked in into the repository, the
>contributor and the Zope Foundation share the copyright for the
>contribution.  This way both the contributor and the foundation own
>the work and can relicence it.
>
>Albertas

There was also an OSM mailing list contributor who pointed out an 
interesting and easily applicable license (the Talis license??) a 
while ago. This originated with a company that compiled a database of 
indices of works provided by different libraries (cf. the OSM 
database).  The company (cf. OSMF) became a co-publisher with 
individual libraries (cf. OSM contributors) maintaining their rights 
to their own contributions.

It is possible that the basic provisions could be added to the Open 
Database License currently being looked at. I personally think there 
are attractions to it but it may be onerous for the OSMF to 
constantly act as an arbiter and, as Etienne points out, it just 
depends how much you - or rather contributors who particularly want 
to see their additions legally protected - trust a future OSMF and 
its constitution.

Mike