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

rob at robmyers.org rob at robmyers.org
Mon Feb 4 16:54:25 GMT 2008


Quoting SteveC <steve at asklater.com>:

>
> On 4 Feb 2008, at 16:30, rob at robmyers.org wrote:
>
>> Quoting Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemeD.net>:
>>
>>> OSMF disagrees significantly with this assessment of a contractual
>>> approach. Commercial geodata (TeleAtlas, Navteq etc.) is protected
>>> this way.
>>
>> Has this been tested in court though? Or has anything equivalent to
>> this been tested in court?
>
> So it's important to test in court....
>
>>> We also believe that the experience of free software/open
>>> source licences is that enforcement is largely achieved by public
>>> pressure: the GPL is enforced more through bad publicity for alleged
>>> violators (or "bad guys") than by actual legal action.
>>
>> Yes, but the GPL works because lawyers read it and having seen that
>> it's at least coherent enough to lead to a lawsuit tell their clients
>> to settle.
>
> Now it isn't important... ?

It's not how it looks officer, really... ;-)

I'm saying that the same effect may be in place in both examples:  
reasonable-looking legal documents.

But I'm also saying that the reasonable-looking legal documents may  
not have the same strength if they were actually tried in court.

With the GPL, the GPL has been upheld in court in Germany. So we have  
some reason to be confident in it. (And one of the CC licences was  
involved in a case in Portugal, so likewise CC).

Have the contracts that commercial geodata outfits use had similar  
confirmation?

- Rob.






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