[OSM-legal-talk] Progressing OSM to a new data Licence regime

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

    I would like to know more about our talks with the CC folks.  
After all, the people at Creative Commons have a lot of respect from  
the world-wide community and I read on the wiki page that:

"... We would have liked Creative Commons to have offered a  
sharealike/attribution data licence that we could adopt. However,  
their position is that map data should be dedicated to the public  
domain, ..., the OSMF board does not believe this route is in the  
project's best long term interests."

So they actually listened to us and to the doubts we (some of us)  
have about CC0, but still they take the position that map data should  
be CC0. I am sure they didn't just say so on a whim, they must have  
had good and solid reasons for that, and the OSMF must have even  
better and more solid reasons for rejecting their suggestion.

I mean, CC are not just anybody, they have played a very important  
part in getting viral licenses accepted in the non-software area, so  
they themselves must have very good reasons for suggesting CC0.

If our only reasons against CC0 are that "we might lose AND  
data" (which isn't even clear!) or "we might lose MASSGIS data" or  
"we might lose South London", then I'd say that is not enough...

Why, exactly, does CC recommend CC0 even after they have thoroughly  
looked at our situation, and on what basis does the OSMF board reject  
the CC suggestion?

(If the board's deliberations on the subject are documented somewhere  
then just point me to that and I'll read up on the arguments.)

Bye
Frederik

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