[OSM-legal-talk] PD vs SA: The eternal battle

[bvh]

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 12:49:18PM +1100, Joseph Gentle wrote:
> You say 'everyone else is worse off' if they use a PD map. It seems
> like the bus company wins - they have more passengers. The passengers
> win - they can learn about the busses more easily. The environment
> wins (less cars on the road). And the map wins. It gets more
> visibillity. Less time and effort goes to proprietry maps. More people
> have a vested interest in making the mapping data accurate. In time,
> the bus company will probably contribute some data to the map to
> correct mistakes and whatnot. It seems to me like everyone wins.

Actually no, your bus company is just going to take PD-OSM data and is
going to bring out a map with its bus routes.  And its competitor is
going to do the same. And no one will have the ability to take both
maps and bring out one comprehensive 'public transport' map for your
town containing routes from all bus companies. The consumer loses.

(And if there is only one bus company in your town, think fastfood
chains instead)

>From my point of view, a map from my local bus company that I get for
free but can't copy/reuse is just as proprietary as any old map from
teleatlas.

> Apple was in a similar situation. They chose to use freebsd (a
> PD-style OS). They use it in the underlying layers of Macosx. They are
> one of the most vicious, control-freak companies you'll find these
> days. Even though they don't have to, they contribute heaps of code
> back to freebsd.
> 
> Given that apple was never going to open-source all of macosx, what
> would you rather they do?
> 
> Is freebsd worse off because apple uses their product? No. Its much
> much better off.

That is a false dichotomy. You are assuming that there are only two
possible outcomes : apple using pd-freebsd or apple not using freebsd.
The thirth option is apple using gpl-freebsd and having to contribute
much more than they actually do. When comparing the current situation
with that scenario we are much worse off.

If you think Apple wouldn't do that just look at webkit. I am quite
convinced that had that one been pd they would just have forked it and
never looked back...

cu bart