[Legal-general] Introduction

[Sebastian Spaeth]

On 2010-07-20, Eric Wolf wrote:
> But my intent of posting here about PD was that working on something
> separate from OSM is less than ideal. Getting the USGS or OSM to change
> their license models to be compatible would be ideal.

I wholeheartedly agree but I remember well the informal vote at the
State of the Map conference. The split was very sharp and pretty much
exactly 50:50 with either side favoring a PD model or requiring a
"copyleft" model.

I do like copyleft for software, but for all the complexity that it
brings to contributing and using geodata I find it unsuitable. (Guess
which side I voted for in 2007).

Sorry for that rant, but all I wanted to communicate is that OSM will
never be able to switch to a liberal license for fear of the mutiny of
50% of its contributors. A separate data base that can be fed into OSM
(possibly provided by USGS) would be a possibility to get us to provide
data to a liberal licensed data pool. And if Eric needs another quote
for his presentations:

"I as a European would happily contribute geodata to a liberally
licensed data pool provided by a US governmental institution" :-).

Sebastian