[OSM-legal-talk] The big license debate

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

>> But coming back to above "asking all users" - I am 99% sure that our
>> current license will not work for us much longer.
> 
> Can you please elaborate on this near certainty?  It seems important.

Please don't make fun of me. As if I'm not already busy enough 
elaborating on all sorts of things ;-)

I believe you have followed the discussion on talk about ITN possibly 
using our Baghdad map? It turned out in the end that it would have been 
more than they could use anyway, but that didn't keep people from 
discussing the issue. During that discussion, several things were 
brought up - I read them for the first time but from others' reactions I 
gathered that that kind of discussion seems to be recurrent.

There was uncertainty over the attribution policy. Technically, the 
license demands that all contributors be listed "if practical" (or a 
similar wording). It turned out that listing all contributors is (a) 
currently impossible without direct database access, and (b) perhaps
not even allowed due to UK data protection requirements, and (c) will 
probably, in the near future at least, become a major space problem not 
only for TV screens but for many kinds of media.

So there's one reason why the license might not work as it stands; 
someone said newer versions of the license do have a clause whereby 
contributors can transfer their right to be identified to a common body, 
but this is not in our 2.0 version and AFAIK there is no automatic 
upgrade path.

Regarding license upgrades, one of the insiders wrote about plans to be 
able to "throw a switch" on your user page to make your identity known, 
and another switch to transfer your right to attribution to the 
foundation. (I think it was SteveC.) This means that the fact that we're 
currently violating our own license is well-known and worked upon. But 
as far as I can see, CC-BY-SA 2.0 does not provide the option of 
transferring your right to attribution, so we must at the very least 
upgrade to 2.5 by that "flick of the switch", and it is unclear what 
happens to data contributed by those who don't flick the switch.

Then, there has been a lot of discussion about how the current 
"share-alike" is really not what even the share-alike advocates want, 
because it does not ensure sharing of data, only sharing of finished 
products. In my often-cited example of the little guy creating a printed 
atlas from OSM data, we currently force him to make his atlas copyable 
(thus ruining his business model, while at the same time getting 
absolutely nothing back into OSM because we don't do scanned atlases) 
instead of having a "share-data" license that would allow him to 
copyright his atlas but force him to give the data back to us.

It has also been pointed out, and I agree with that sentiment, that our 
current license is not really compatible with the goals stated on the 
web site, at least not with the spirit conferred by the words.

Many people have said that, while being the nearest that the copyleft 
license mass-market has to offer, current CC licenses are unsuitable for 
collections of data like the one we're building. Numerous other licenses 
risen from that problem have been cited (I believe one was for data 
about books in libraries, the other for a font).

A large number of grey areas have been identified, most revolving around 
the question what constitutes a derived work. Discussion on the list has 
very clearly shown that even die-hard SA activists seem to think in 
terms of "attempting to get away with something", instead of having 
positive legal guidance on what is ok and what not. While acceptable for 
an individual (it's what I do in everyday life!), such insecurity will 
hinder widespread commercial use.

But do I really have to repeat all this? It is in the Wiki, it is in the 
archives. Am I seeing ghosts? A panel of lawyers and legal laymen is to 
be summoned for this year's SOTM, and I shall hope this is not just 
figleaf action ("please find ways to make everything right without 
changing our license!").

Bye
Frederik

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