[OSM-legal-talk] The big license debate

[Tom Chance]

Ahoy,

New subscriber, old hack in CC-UK/iCommons/AFFS circles... prompted to join by recent debates and especially this statement:

Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote:
> I think it is generally agreed that with the current license, that
> statement is false. CC-BY-SA is a legal restriction, especially the SA.
> So the question is: How do with fix this? We either change the aims of
> the project, or we change the license.

I may have missed something, but I don't believe that "is generally agreed". If anything, given that the prevailing opinion in the free software community was that the “share alike” clause was desirable, we should presume in favour of SA until persuaded otherwise by evidence. The SA clause is a restriction on an individual's legal right to do as she pleases with the data, perhaps. But this is an ancient debate about freedom in which most philosophers, including most liberal traditions, would say it is at worst a perfectly reasonable restriction and at best a necessary and noble social norm.

Attribution is a restriction; do you want to get rid of that too? Maybe we should get rid of laws that prevent us from dumping garbage in the streets, after all it’s a restriction imposed on us. You have to justify why a restriction is onerous before junking it, and equally justify why it is valuable before imposing it. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine ;-)

To my mind, SA is only onerous for people who really cannot continue distributing maps without full copyright on them. Anyone working and profiting *with* maps (who will probably bypass the SA clause), and many of those profiting *from* maps, will do just fine by it. We urgently need to clarify the scope of the SA and BY clauses, sure, but it’s hardly Armageddon for the bespoke mapping community or downstream users. The value of SA is enormous; it builds a community and prevents others from “cashing out” and taking our work for their own without contributing back. As OSM grows the clause will facilitate healthy competition without letting companies take the work so far, say “thank you very much” and drop all support for the community.

There are two dangers that I perceive in these discussions. The first is that a lot of mappers without legal qualifications (myself included) pontificate at length about the effects of the SA clause without seeking proper legal opinion. The second is that a vocal minority makes enough noise in favour of a BSD-type license or public domain declarations to override the silent majority, who are quite happy with CC BY-SA. The two together are really quite toxic. Let’s not sacrifice reason and the future of the OSM community on the altar of quick bids for fame and cash.

I'm willing to help put together a comprehensive legal FAQ on CC BY-SA, BSD and PD in good time for SoTM, informed by lawyers rather than IANAL-mappers. I believe some people are already working on this?

Kind regards,
Tom