[OSM-legal-talk] Legal Advice [Was Re: Talk tonight...]

[Richard Fairhurst]

(This is a post in my role as an OSM Foundation board member rather  
than from me as a freelance ranting loon.)

rob wrote:

> Quoting Chris Fleming <me at chrisfleming.org>:
>
>> Now I know that we had hoped to get some proper legal advice but I'm not
>> sure if we ever did what was the status of this.
>
> OSM definitely need some good legal advice about what can and cannot
> be licenced in which ways. This is quite urgent.
>
> Is there anything currently in progress for this, or is there anything
> people can do to help?

The OSMF board is looking at the current state of OSM licensing and  
future options for it.

We are actively holding discussions with relevant organisations, both  
in person and electronically. (For what it's worth there have been  
around 30 e-mails on the topic between a subset of OSMF board members  
today alone.) We have also received useful feedback from others about  
perceptions and problems with the licensing.

The process only commenced with the election of this year's board and  
we have therefore not yet come to any conclusions. However, we do  
appreciate the urgency of the matter and are optimistic about some of  
the potential developments. Open data licensing is, at last, an active  
area and it is very possible that OSM will be able to benefit from  
some of the work being done elsewhere. In particular we have been  
briefed (in confidence, I'm afraid) about developments expected this  
or next month which could have great relevance to OSM.

We have a board meeting tomorrow night and hope to make further progress then.

 From our discussions so far, I think it's fair to say that a wide  
range of options are being aired but that we are all working with the  
best interests of the project at heart. I should stress that at this  
stage nothing has been ruled out.

Richard
OpenStreetMap Foundation