[OSM-legal-talk] Making OSM Public domain

[Rob Myers]

Philipp Klaus Krause wrote:

> Copyleft/share-alike seemed like a good idea to me for a long time.
> However the large number of incompatible licenses like GPLv2 only,
> GPLv3, CC-BY-SA fragment the free software/data/etc community and
> everyone has to reinvent the wheel since the existing free stuff they
> would like build upon is locked away from them by licenses that claim to
> protect freedom.

BY-SA should not be used on code, and most programs can have different
licences for code & data. I think it's only Debian who get really funny
about this.

The trend is toward unifying copyleft licences, with FDL/BY-SA
compatibility still on the cards, GPL3 being more compatible with other
licences, and OSI committed to preventing further licence proliferation.

I don't deny that incompatible licences can be a pain, but then so can
DRM, proprietary work, and all the other stuff that copyleft licences
protect against. On balance, the former is an annoyance, whereas the
latter is something worse.

- Rob.

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