[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] OT: Re: License

[Nic Roets]

> GPL prevents people from combining "[only] freely distributable" work
> with "[only] non-freely distributable work".

GPL only tries to prevent this. In practise commercial software
vendors made sure that their products are not part of the same process
/ does not run in the same memory space as GPL software (like the
linux kernel). Then they could claim on a technical level that they
are not combining their software with GPL software. But ask a Linux
user were the kernel stops and Netscape / Acroreader begins...

That's what why it makes no sense to me for OSM to use CC, GPL or
LGPL. Anyone looking at say the applet can see that the OSM data and
the Yahoo imagery belongs to different layers. So it cannot be
"combining" to the extent where the one copyright infects the other.
Yahoo knows it and that's why we have a deal with them.

So if anyone ever wants to bundle a commercial map with the OSM map,
he must just use software or transparent paper or something that makes
it clear where OSM stops and where it begins. Oh ye and if OSM goes
GPL or LGPL he must provide the user with a procedure to extract and
replace the OSM vector data, which usually not difficult because we
are talking of MAPS after all.