[OSM-legal-talk] Is the "data share-alike" road navigable?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi Tom,

    everybody agrees that our current license does not achieve your "2":

> 2. Database of nodes, etc. - share-alike licensed

Because as long as you don't publish your data, the SA doesn't kick  
in - as you said:

> Great, people can now share and build upon my book. But they don’t  
> get at the data because CC BY-SA doesn’t require the release of  
> source materials a-la GPL, so unless I voluntarily do so, or  
> foolishly distribute the data as well as the book, the data will  
> never go back into the OSM database.

This is a well-known problem, and opinions only differ in how much  
this is a problem, not in whether it exists or not.

Many people say that it is not too bad, because as your book  
depicting the bins and trees is SA, someone else could now simply  
take the locations from your book and put them back into OSM, so  
while you aren't forced to give us your data, you are forced to allow  
others to "reverse-engineer" your data from your final product.

Of course, from a programmer's viewpoint, that sounds like an awful  
waste of time. But then again, the intermediate data may not have  
been in a format and/or structure that lends itself to easy  
conversion into OSM data, so in many cases something like this would  
probably be done.

> Let’s get a legal opinion on the connection between 2 & 3 before we  
> let this debate rage on much longer, because several people  
> seriously doubt that you could get away with 3, since the maps  
> would be derivative works of the data.

If they are derivative works, then you can't do it. But I think we  
should have a strong say in what a derivative work is and what not.

I must honestly say that I am getting a bit tired by "let's ask a  
lawyer...". That phrase is heavily overused, especially by people  
who'd like an issue to simply go away. It should be us who decide  
what we want, and then find ways to make it happen (with the lawyers'  
help in finding the right wording to serve our wishes). It should not  
be lawyers who tell us what to do and what not. Next time someone  
asks a tagging question on talk I'll tell him to go ask Ordnance  
Survey how it should be done ;-)

If we decide that we want the data to be share-alike, but acknowledge  
the copious amount of work put in to make a map from data by allowing  
people to retain all rights to this work, then that's what we're  
going to do.

Lawyers can help you if you know what you want. They cannot help you  
find out what you want.

Bye
Frederik

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