[OSM-legal-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 11:52:24AM +0100, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> Let us drop all this nonsense and concentrate on drawing up the moral
>> guidelines - saying what we consider ok and what not - instead of
>> fantasizing about having legal powers to enforce anything.
>
> I don't get it : you go on about how license such and such is
> possibly unenforceable and then you propose moral guidelines
> that are 100% guaranteed not enforceable. I fail to see progress.

Well my position is the enlightened one: We can't enforce anything,  
so let's be honest, admit that we cannot enforce anything, and tell  
people what we would like to do them, knowing full well that if  
anyone does not comply, well, he doesn't.

Pushing a viral license in full knowledge that it is unlikely to work  
against those who chose to neglect it, is lying to the community:  
Giving the community the illusion of legal power, and even a hunch of  
a promise that you will go after the bad guys.

What you say is right; a license, even if not enforceable, does  
express certain values or wishes. But in my eyes this is just  
succumbing to wishful thinking ("I might sue them..."). Yeah you  
might. But for this infinitesimally small chance of some time perhaps  
taking someone to court, you weigh down your contribution with a  
license that creates tons of questions, is unfair (because it has  
much greater legal power in Europe than elsewhere), and wastes  
everbody's time in dealing with it.

Someone brought up 80n's example of how in tiles at home, we actually  
use a big PNG image with one pixel for each Level-12 tile as a  
database, telling us which tiles are land tiles and which are sea  
tiles. So there's a database for you; at the same time, we say that  
images created from OSM data (mashups etc) are not databases in the  
sense of the license. This is one of, I'm sure, many points that will  
never be solved clearly and properly.

Bye
Frederik

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