[OSM-legal-talk] The OSM licence: where we are, where we're going

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> Leaving restrictions unrestricted does not pass freedom on to other
> people, it passes on the ability to remove freedom from other people.

If you would stop talking about freedom being "removed" that would  
put us a giant step further. If something is PD then its freedom  
cannot be removed. You can only *use* the PD data to *create* a *new*  
thing, the freedom or non-freedom of which you can then control. I  
find that legitimate. If your new but restricted thing has no value- 
add, then nobody will care. If it has added value then good for you.  
If you overcharge or make ridiculous restrictions, then people will  
just go back to the source.

With PD, you only ever get to dictate freedom or non-freedom for the  
thing that you have newly created (by using the PD data). Nobody ever  
gets to change the license of the original.

You understand perfectly what I am talking about and still you choose  
wording that suggests to the uninitiated that something is lost.

Your argument is that somebody might take the PD source, improve on  
it, and then everyone might be tempted to use the improved version  
even if it comes under a restricted license. You call this "the  
removal of freedom".

If I go with this for a second, then I could paint the following  
scenario: OSM has a clean copyleft license. Along comes evil  
commercial player HansHans, creating a proprietary world map from  
scratch, not relying on any part of OSM, which outperforms OSM's.  
Access is free, so the whole world uses HansHans' map and nobody  
cares about OSM anymore. Has HansHans "removed freedom from OSM" by  
creating a better alternative? Surely not, even though they could be  
said to have "hijacked" OSM's ideas. Even you will concede that.

Now assume that OSM had a PD license and HansHans had not started  
from scratch, but copied 5% of OSM's data initially. Or 10%. Or  
20%.... what percentage would be required to allow you to claim that  
HansHans had "removed freedom from OSM"?

It's just not logical. Removing freedom would mean traveling back in  
time and stopping anything being published under PD.

Bye
Frederik

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