[OSM-legal-talk] Share-data licence

Tom Chance tom at acrewoods.net
Fri Mar 9 10:53:49 GMT 2007


Ahoy,

On Fri, 9 Mar 2007 09:54:08 +0000, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemeD.net> wrote:
> Would it be helpful/interesting if I were to have a first stab at
> drawing up such a licence, and posting it on the wiki for comments
> and discussion?
> 
> IANAL (aargh) so obviously it won't be legally watertight. A real
> licence might be best drawn up by people like the CC guys. But maybe
> it would help to remove some of the ambiguity from the discussion.

You're going to love this answer ;-)

I'd much rather wait until we have some legal opinion on underlying questions, before a bunch of unqualified enthusiasts start messing around in the wiki. What legal certainties exist here, what rights do we have, what rights could we circumnavigate with licenses, and in what important respects are countries' legal systems different?

Then again, have fun trying! It would at least be an interesting exercise to try and devise a clear and practical definition of source material, and a similarly clear and practical definition of derivative works that kick in the requirement to share the source materials.

Personally if it were practical (which I doubt) I'd be in favour of share-alike with a source requirement, but there you go. I believe people using the maps are just as important as the cartographers, I don't like the narrow self-interest that drives the share-alike data argument, and I'm eagerly awaiting Eric the Entrepreneur!

Regards,
Tom





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