[OSM-legal-talk] Please enable commercial use

[Sebastian Spaeth]

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> I think the biggest problem for commercial users is probably the fact
> that they can't get legal info from us - if they ask "can we do X"
> then our response will always be "read the license and ask a lawyer".

I agree, that is very unsatifactory. It is even inconvenient to me as a 
private person, and it is a killer argument for commercial firms.

> If they say "but I would really like to do X, if you give me in
> writing that I can do X I'll give you $10.000 and print OSM adverts on
> every GPS I sell", then we still cannot say it because we're not the
> owners of the data. 

In Linux that problem is solved by companies bying their product from 
Redhat, including some kind of insurance that RedHat provides. If there 
are legal hassles, then Redhat would be sued and RedHat would have to 
deal with the 20000 copyright holders and not the end-user (if you are 
not SCO and live in a parallel universe).

spaetz