[OSM-legal-talk] Starting Repository For Public Domain OSM, Data

[John Wilbanks]

The folks at Creative Commons and Science Commons would be happy to help 
out in the creation of a public domain repository. My opinions on the 
difficulties of using "copyleftish" licenses on data are well known and 
I won't rehash them here :-)

jtw

 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I've had some recent discussions with Joseph Gentle and Kari Pihkala
about the desire to maintain a "clean" repository of data collected
for OSM that would be released in the public domain before being
imported into OSM. This would allow anyone to use the data without
having to worry about the OSM license restrictions, especially the
viral portions.

I wasn't a proponent of this "public domain approach" until I started
to learn about the licensing issue and some of the problems and
complications it can cause. I know believe things are a lot simpler if
my OSM data is just released into the public domain before it is
contributed.

I believe there is (at least a small) group that would also like to
release there data into the public domain before it is contributed to
OSM. Joseph and Kari have given their support to setting up a
repository for this public domain data. I'm not sure yet exactly what
this repository will look like, or how much of the OSM software stack
we will need to replicate. I don't want this to turn into a fork of
OSM. I'd rather see it as a holding basin mechanism that can be used
to release data collected for OSM into the public domain before it is
uploaded to the main OSM database.

Joseph, Kari, and I thought it would be wise to bounce this idea of
the legal-talk mailing list. Are there any strong objections to our
setting up a public domain repository, and if so, what are the
objections? Would it be appropriate to start a separate mailing list
for those interested in releasing the data they collect for OSM under
the public domain?

I'd like to work with Joseph to get the infrastructure we'll need for
this project lined up. This will likely include finding a sponsor
organization and doing some work on a simple websiter or wiki.
However, we thought it wise to mention our idea here before we take
any concrete steps.

Landon