[OSM-legal-talk] [Osmf-talk] New license proposal status II

[James Livingston]

On 03/12/2009, at 10:19 PM, Mike Collinson wrote:
> - Whether friendly or unfriendly, they never have any obligation to merge in their data improvements into our database.
> - However, you or I can.
> 
> Does that make sense?

I completely agree that they don't have to do anything towards merging any data, I meant "unfriendly" as not actively working towards improving the upstream data in the main OSM DB (where sensible), not in any way hostile.

> The key will be clause 1 of the Contributor Terms[1] allowing you or I to do.  Is the ODbL license itself explicit permission from them? I'll bring it up for review at an License Working Group in the light of your question.

I can't see how the ODbL would give a third party (e.g. you or I) permission to agree to that, as it would mean we could relicense data without the copyright holders approval, but I'd be interested to know what they think.