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

[Gervase Markham]

Tom Hughes wrote:
> I think the concept of an explicit requirement to hand back data
> is the part of this plan that I gave most concerns about - it was
> certainly far and away the most problematic clause of the original
> Mozilla license I think, and the whole idea seems to have largely
> vanished since then in most open licenses.

I think your memory may be failing you here.

The MPL version 1.0 had a clause about making source available:

"3.2. Availability of Source Code.
Any Modification which You create or to which You contribute must be 
made available in Source Code form under the terms of this License 
either on the same media as an Executable version or via an accepted 
Electronic Distribution Mechanism to anyone to whom you made an 
Executable version available; ..."
http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.0.html

and this clause is unchanged in MPL 1.1. The annotated MPL 1.0 says:

"This provision is intended to ensure availability of code, while 
minimizing the burden on each Contributor. It is based on the principle 
of "code follows the executable" that is found in the GPL. It does not 
require that you return Modifications to mozilla.org or any other named 
organization. However, you may do so if you choose, and we hope that you 
wish to participate in the development community that mozilla.org is 
chartered to foster."
http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/annotations-1.0.html

However, I agree that an explicit requirement to hand data back to OSM 
(as opposed to a requirement to hand data to whoever you give the 
derived work to) is problematic. If OSM data were software, this sort of 
clause would probably make the licence not conform to the Debian Free 
Software Guidelines. It would certainly fail both the Desert Island and 
Dissident tests.

Gerv