[OSM-legal-talk] Contact Info For Tom Hughes Regarding Public Domain Mailing List

[Joseph Gentle]

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Simon Ward <simon at bleah.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 08:19:50PM +0100, Brian Quinion wrote:
>> Personally I'd be very happy to see the discussion of PD continue on
>> the talk list but a mailing list seems a very minor resource compared
>> to the time and effort that have gone into the creating the new
>> license.
>
> I see the PD route as just giving up.  "It's too hard" is not a good
> answer for me.  It's clear that my opinion isn't global though.

My motivation for being interested in this stems from an issue I had
before the license was changed. I wanted to write an iphone
application to help people catch public transport in my local area.
The idea was that people could pull out their iphone, point on a map
where they wanted to go and it would show them which bus stop to walk
to, which busses to catch, how long it would take, etc.

I intended to have an overlay on my map which showed bus stops. This
data would be collected from the local bus company.

Under the old license, I couldn't use OSM because I couldn't share the
overlay. It might not have been a problem - but I couldn't risk it.
This got me wondering - what applications will never be written
because of the OSM SA licensing?

I think this problem has changed with the new license; but _any_
share-alike license will have similar problems. I would love to see
the same free mapping data used everywhere; by tourists, local
councils, proprietary satnav systems, google earth, etc. I don't think
this will ever happen with the OSM data because of the share-alike
requirement. It would be similar to a linux license requiring you to
also GPL any software you write on your computer.

I know its not _that_ bad anymore, but I got idealistic.

-J


> Simon
> --
> A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
> simple system that works.—John Gall