[OSM-legal-talk] Houses of cards

[Michael Collinson]

At 03:08 PM 2/21/2008, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>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" ;)

Well, if we do go any other way than the PD-like 
route you and I personally prefer, then 
dual-license is actually a serious option that 
has never been aired(?). *If* OSMF was given the 
right to do so, it would be an effective way of 
raising funds for servers, bandwidth and the like 
we will surely need when demand for OSM data and 
map tiles really takes in the next 18 months or 
so.  A small price for the small commercial guy 
and a big price for any company starting with G, 
N or T :-).  Makes things simple, either clearly 
comply with terms about giving data back or pay 
some money to assist others to do it.

Mike