[OSM-legal-talk] License License License

[SteveC]

Wow the volume's picked up here then huh? It's great to see so many  
people interested.

First order - the current draft and why isn't it up on the website?  
Mike Collinson has been ill. That's it. No conspiracy. As soon as he's  
well (which I believe he almost is) you'll see it.

That draft was something the OSMF engaged a large legal firm pro-bono  
to look at. There were some issues they had but they were mostly  
minor. Unfortunately the particular people we were dealing with became  
very busy and despite repeated attempts we've been unable to get in  
contact with them.

Last week I met with a new legal firm and we've been cleared via their  
pro-bono process to be given legal time to work on the license.  
They're sending an engagement letter now and when I have that signed  
you'll all know who the firm is. Because of conflict of interest I  
can't talk to them about CloudMade stuff (not that I would anyway) and  
they can't talk to CM about the license with the same people who are  
helping us. This is normal conflict protection stuff and I went  
through it all with the previous firm. I'm quite positive about this  
firm as they seem genuinely interested in helping out and looking at a  
permissive license rather than the bread and butter restrictive  
licenses that they're paid for. That's my take on it anyway.

The next step after that is for them to review the license with  
general comments, and against use cases. So once we've engaged them I  
will ask them to review the use cases on the wiki. When they've done  
that I'll get their responses and report back here on the outcome. If  
you have better ideas for what to do please air them here.

The use cases are great but I think that if you accept this license  
won't be 110% perfect, and that we can have later licenses that  
inherit (ODbL 2.0 or whatever) then the bigger thing to think about is  
the home for this thing, a body to nurture it and so on.

My lack of time on the lists recently makes me sad and I'm trying to  
catch up with all the posts.

Best

Steve