[OSM-legal-talk] More free data and share-alike morality bumf

[Rob Myers]

IANAL, TINLA.

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 11:53 PM, Simon Ward <simon at bleah.co.uk> wrote:

> I'd rather it need not be legally binding, just automatic.  The problem
> is that the laws to restrict exist at all, not the philosophy behind
> keeping things free.

The laws that do or do not restrict data are different from those that
restrict software and cultural works.

Data may or may not involve a copyright and may or may not involve a
database right. This varies at least by jurisdiction.

Geodata providers therefore often use contract law rather than
"intellectual property" law to make their data proprietary.

> Please note that if I give you free software, you do not have to give me
> anything at all in return.  You don't even have to give me anything if
> you give it to someone else, you are simply obliged by the license that
> if you redistribute it (including derivatives), you redistribute enough
> for it to be useful for the next person to have the same freedoms you
> do.

In particular, if you don't receive the binary you have no claim to
the source. This gets obscured by the fact that most people just bung
the source on a public VCS or file server, but they don't have to do
this.

It may look like SA works require sharing more broadly than the GPL,
but SA only requires that members of the audience be able to copy the
work. This is comparable to only users of software being able to get
the source.

> In addition the GPL at least is explicitly not a contract, and I'm not
> sure making the data licence a contract is a good idea either, though I
> don't have enough understanding to authoritatively say so, and neither
> the contacts or money to get the legal advice.

My lay person's understanding is that there may not be rights on the
data(base) in every jurisdiction that can be licenced so a contract
may be neccessary. Geodata providers are already doing this, and the
proposed licence would ironise this restriction in much the same way
that the GPL ironises copyright. Contract restrictions on Geodata are
not universal in the same way as copyright is, but they are
restrictions.

- Rob.