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

[Joseph Gentle]

On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 7:08 AM, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
> On 25 Oct 2008, at 11:56, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> What I don't like about share-alike is the small-minded attempt to
>> codify this
>> giving away into something legally binding. To me, this is deeply
>> based
>> in a negativist, paranoid world view where everyone is out to cheat
>> you.
>
> ... which is sort of the basis for the free market

The free market as well as all economics is based on the principle of
limited resources. When you take my toy, I don't have a toy anymore.

Data doesn't work like that. If you download my mapping data and use
it, I still have my mapping data. Cool, huh?

Someone said something earlier in one of these threads which really
resonated with me. The share-alike is your classic eye-for-an-eye
license. The PD is your Ghandi license. I suppose it is idealistic;
but I think thats ok.

Currently, for a lot of use cases the proprietry google maps are less
restrictive than our OSM. (Google maps let you make any mashup
whatsoever under any license so long as you put it on the 'web for
free.) If we want to be seen as the free, community map, we need to
make our maps more free.

A bit offtopic, but my fav. license is this:
/*
 * ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 * "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
 * <phk at FreeBSD.ORG> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
 * can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
 * this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return Poul-Henning Kamp
 * ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 */

In his own words: ".... And quite frankly, I think I have gotten much
more out of my beerware license than most people have from their GNU
or BSD licenses. "

-J
[not a lawyer, not legal advice]