[OSM-legal-talk] Houses of cards

[Richard Fairhurst]

Frederik Ramm wrote:

> Apart from some esoteric inheritance cases perhaps, you cannot,
> ever, become party to a contract without making a decision to do so.  
> That's the very basis of contracts. (See also the Wikipedia entry  
> for "Contract" [...]

Come on, Frederik, don't treat me like a ninny. I do know that. You'll  
be telling me to see also the Wikipedia entry for "The" next.

But in the scenario you cite (ignoring the potential existence of  
copyright), you're into "efficient breach" and "reliance and  
expectation interests" and you really would be better placed asking a  
very, very specialised lawyer. Evil Bastard A has breached the  
contract by removing the licencing stuff at the start of planet.xml  
(which presumably is lots of fun with a 968578912365Gb file). OSM is  
therefore entitled to damages and restitution. What these  
damages/injunction/etc. might be depends on which jurisdiction OSM  
felt it most advantageous to bring the case in (insert very very long  
discussion here about different treatment of damages for open source  
materials [1]).

At this point armies of lawyers descend and I go down the pub.

(Personally I suspect that A would do the same five minutes' Googling  
that I've just done and, again, decide to use TIGER instead.)

cheers
Richard

[1] even more theoretical aside: maybe we should dual-license to also  
say "we'll sell you full non-exclusive rights to planet.osm for £5,000  
a node" ;)