[OSM-legal-talk] The big license debate, correction

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

>> And the only situation it would be required is when someone wants to use 
>> an OSM map without contributing anything of value back to the community. 
> 
> Wrong phrase there - replace "use" with "publish" - obviously freedom to use 
> the data is very important.  But for publishing, the sharealike is a way of 
> repaying people who created the data, by allowing them to copy things made 
> with the data.

Doubly wrong phrase I'd say, because it, again, invokes some evil guy 
who just takes and never gives ("... without contributing anything back 
..."). There may be such people.

I know that most of you see large, blodless, ruthless commercial 
entities when talking about these things.

What I see is a happy and active OSM contributor in a little town 
somewhere, maybe a student. Every weekend he goes out mapping, he has 
contributed hundreds of thousands of GPS points. He needs money to pay 
for his expenses. He has an idea, strikes a deal with a local publisher 
or newspaper, and creates a little map book or something - in turn, of 
course, making lots of improvements to OSM data. The publisher, or 
newspaper, or whoever, then uses the finished work in their usual ways. 
The student gets paid a little money. Everyone is happy. Except that 
this relies on the publisher or newspaper being able to deny their 
competitors the right of just copying the work. (Note how I'm being 
anti-business here, I'm not even talking about individuals making 
copies, I'm talking about big business making copies!)

In reality, our student will probably end up driving a taxi or serving 
food in a restaurant instead of going out on paid mapping trips, because 
the model doesn't work with Share-Alike. And this is sad - for the 
student, for our project, and maybe even for the restaurant guests.

I know, we cannot distinguish between different patterns of commercial 
use. If we grant the right of selling some OSM-based work to a publisher 
under the usual terms to our happy student, then we will also have to 
grant it to Ordnance Survey.

But that's where my "unfairness" argument comes in. Our rules are much 
more binding for the happy student, who lacks the resources to 
circumvent them by complex legal or technical setups. A large corporate 
entity with an evil edge could very well abuse our data (or at least go 
against our intentions) and "get away with it".

                               --

Whenever someone argues pro-SA, inevitably the big bad business guys 
come in, they who want to take everything and give nothing, they who 
have to be fought. I agree that their behaviour is morally questionable, 
but I simply see too much attrition in trying to keep them out, too many 
desirable uses and projects that have a small commercial edge shot down 
by that anti-theft-cannon.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'