[OSM-legal-talk] The big license debate

David Groom reviews at pacific-rim.net
Wed Feb 28 19:49:48 GMT 2007


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Laurence Penney" <lorp at lorp.org>
To: <legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] The big license debate


> Perhaps it would be helpful to set out what should happen when someone
> contacts OSM, asking if they can use the data in a particular way.
>
> Here are some options:
>
> 1. We shrug, and say get a lawyer to read the license.
> 2. Steve says yes or no.
> 3. Certain OSM Foundation guardians vote yes or no.
> 4. The OSM community votes yes or no.
>
> I'd be interested to hear what other people's ideal might be.

My ideal would be to have a  license that was so obvious what you could and 
could not do with it that 1 - 4 above became a very rare occasion.


> IMO it is a fantasy to think that the license-conformity of most
> organizations' intended usage will typically be clear. We need a slick
> procedure for answering usage legality queries without consulting a
> lawyer each time.
>
> It is also a fantasy to think the license will be considered in
> isolation by users, contributors, or by lawyers involved in any OSM
> legal case. I suspect the front page text, quoted earlier by Robert
> (Jamie) Munro, will have considerable force in undermining clauses in
> the CC-BY-SA license.
>

As I suspect would be the fact that major OSM contributors themselves do not 
comply with the current license.  I am not intending to point the finger at 
any particular person here as I am guilty of the offence myself. In images I 
have created I have always tried to include the OSM logo and the CC-BY-SA 
statement which appears on osmarendered maps.  However reading the details 
of the CC-BY-SA license I see it states "You may distribute, publicly 
display, .....the Work only under the terms of this License, and You must 
include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, this License with 
every copy or phonorecord of the Work You distribute"  Now go and have a 
look at all featured images on the wiki.  How many of them ( the images, not 
the wiki) either include the license, or the URI of the license?  The answer 
as far as I can see is none.  Some do state the license is produced under a 
CC -BY-SA license, but this does not satisfy the requirements of the 
CC-BY-SA license.

To quote the wiki,  we are holding those featured images up as images "which 
have been identified as the best examples of OpenStreetMap mapping, or as 
useful illustrations of the OpenStreetMap project."

David

> -- Laurence






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