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

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

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Gervase Markham wrote:
| Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote:
|> It's been proposed by me several times in the past. I think it's
|> essential. I don't know of a similar major project that doesn't do some
|> kind of assignment. Wikipedia is the nearest, but Wikipedia is a
|> collection of articles that all stand on their own.

I didn't make it clear that I want a non-exclusive, non-revokable
license to the foundation, rather than "assignment" as such. This is
important, for example, for the case of map data collected as a side
product of collecting some commercial data. There's no question that you
can still use your data for whatever you want.

| Can you name some which do?

~ * MusicBrainz.org
~ * voxforge.org

Then there's lots of code projects like Mozilla, apache, etc. and also
semi-free projects like dmoz.org, peoples map etc.

|> We need a situation where someone can say "Yes" when an enquiry comes
|> in, not "hire a lawyer to look at license XYZ". Otherwise the data is
|> useless for many purposes that everyone would agree it should be allowed
|> for.
|
| But surely a license is a codification of "what everyone agrees it
| should be allowed for"?

In theory yes, but based on how long we've been discussing this issue,
it can never be in practise.

|> For example, a while ago, ITN news needed a map of Baghdad. No one could
|> say for sure how much of the TV buletin they would have to release
|> CC-by-sa in order to allow them to do that. Looking back at that now,
|> probably "only" the final ITN styled bitmap image that is shown on the
|> screen, but the designers of ITN's style guidelines probably haven't
|> licensed ITN to release them.
|>
|> If the foundation owned the data, they could say to ITN "just show a
|> logo and www.openstreetmap.org in the corner at some point", and
|> everyone would be happy.
|
| As I understand it, the new licence solves this problem.

It might solve /that/ problem, but it will not solve all problems.

|> Another example: it would be great if an npemap type system could be
|> used with OSM maps to derive a free postcode database, but license
|> incompatibilities make that impossible. This is insane.
|
| (Define "free".) You may think so. Other contributors may think it's
| entirely reasonable for postcode data calculated using OSM to be BY-SA
| rather than PD.

In this case PD. FTP is PD, npemaps postcodes are PD.

|> Obviously if
|> that went to any kind of vote, the foundation would allow that, but they
|> don't currently have the power to allow it.
|
| It would certainly be interesting to look at whether the licence change
| would have any effect on the postcode problem.
|
|> Yes, maybe you can come up with a license that would unambiguously allow
|> the above two uses, but there will be cases where it will be in OSM's
|> interests to bend the rules, and we must provide a mechanism that allows
|> this.
|
| There are negative sides to a copyright assignment. A) We probably
| wouldn't get one from e.g. AND or MASSGIS (although I'm speculating).

We could handle large data donations specially. If there were 3 or 4
organisations we had to ask (and normally only 1 per geographic area)
before we could use the data for an unforseen purpose, that's a lot
easier than having to contact potentially thousands of contributors each
time.

How do we know that AND and MASSGIS will support our current proposed
license change?

| B)
| It would mean the scenario I mentioned to Frederik, where a commercial
| company could sue a license violator, couldn't happen, because they
| would no longer be the copyright holder.

If they are suing over a part of the data they contributed, they would
be joint copyright holders. They would be entitled to damages along with
the foundation. They could also help the foundation with legal costs or
something. I'm not sure of the law, but maybe they could sue on the
grounds that they lost money due to a third parties illegal actions,
even if the actions weren't against them directly.

Robert (Jamie) Munro
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