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

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> 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.

My thinking as well, just needs careful consideration of viral  
effects, i.e. if you want to be totally safe then you can only ever  
collect data before it is assimilated into the OSM pool, and after  
that it is completely lost to you because even if, once in OSM, the  
data is only further edited by the same person originally creating  
it, it might have to be contaminated by "a node on the other side of  
the road". This is of course the chicken way to deal with it, one  
could also take a more combative stance and postulate that anything  
only ever touched by users who say their data is PD, is PD.

I'm tied up in a lot of other OSM things right now but I'm happy that  
you take the initiative and you have my full support (moral and data- 
wise). I'm the person who started the "all my contributions are PD"  
thing on the Wiki and I'm happy to see it has gained quite a number  
of followers.

I'm especially hopefull concering the US where you have this huge  
body of PD information to start with. If you manage to convince  
people that it is good to keep this PD body alive rather than cutting  
away little pieces each time something is edited then that would be  
quite an achievement!

I could envisage editors supporting multiple repositories and  
becoming license aware ("you have edited 5 items that were PD before.  
Do you want to keep the PD license on those...").

Bye
Frederik
-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"