[OSM-legal-talk] Making OSM Public domain

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

A Morris wrote:
> This is a textbook example of the pro-PD propaganda I mentioned.

Which I created on purpose to counter your textbook examples of pro-SA 
propaganda. I really thought you were doing that on purpose (the usual 
FUD stuff about evil people locking away data and so on), I didn't think 
these were meant as a real input to our discussion, I thought you wanted 
to illustrate what can go wrong when writing polls.

> * The number of users will be "much smaller"... Thats it? That's your
> concrete argument? It's hand-waving propaganda with no basis in fact,
> and with no evidence; in fact the number of users of Linux vs FreeBSD
> is strong evidence against your position.

Come on, we've been there. You make an useless comparison with software 
by citing Linux and BSD, I'll ask you to point me to a GPL licensed web 
server with more users than Apache. "In fact, this is a strong evidence 
against your position!". (But at least we have lighttpd fighting for 
proper Freedom on that front... oh noes! They're BSD also. We're doomed.)

> * You then assert that "legitimate users will be unable to use the
> project". Again, a specious argument, seeing as the new license is not
> yet written. 

This is a fundamental thing and not something you can write a license to 
solve, and something you could have thought of yourself if you had taken 
time to read and think rather than just fire off textbook phrases. The 
problem arises not from the particular wording of a license, but from 
the basic concept of share-alike. Either you want to force people to 
release proprietary data they combine with OSM, or you don't.

My pet example is this: Student writes thesis on public transport, gets 
lots of data from local transport authority under the provision that it 
is only used for academic purposes (maybe proprietary; maybe legally 
protected because drivers' whereabouts can be derived from the data 
etc.). Student wants to combine this with OSM data for his analyses. Now 
EITHER the license allows this, but then it will also allow the 
transport authority themselves to use the data without releasing stuff - 
or it doesn't, which will then lead to our student calling TeleAtlas and 
asking them for a free "academic" sample of their data he can use, 
sending out the message: OSM is all nice and dandy but if you want to do 
serious work, better call TeleAtlas.

Now depending on how hardcore you are, you'll say: Tough luck, the 
student should use his time to talk the transport authority into 
releasing the data under a license compatible with ours. You might even 
say: Tough luck, so the student is not a legitimate user. Both of which 
seem quite cynical to me.

If you're not that cynical and have a good idea to make the above 
scenario work for the student in question without going against basic 
share-alike, I suggest that you offer that idea in this forum or make it 
known to those working hard to draft the new license (whomever you 
believe them to be).

> I really don't want to respond to every silly little post regarding
> the PD/share-alike debate, but I feel that propaganda bordering on
> untruthfulness needs to be challenged.

It looked to me like your aim was rather to respond in kind.

Bye
Frederik

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