[OSM-legal-talk] OBbL and forks

80n 80n80n at gmail.com
Tue Dec 8 13:52:38 GMT 2009


On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 7:40 AM,  <mapping at sheerman-chase.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > A quick question for the legal people: does ODbL allow the project to
> > be forked?
>
> Why not?
>
> The code is in svn and has been for ages, ready for forking.  Of
> course, you can't change the license on the GPL code that you fork
> without re-writing it.
>
> The OSM data can be forked now as cc-by-sa as the data is right there
> in planet, ready for forking.  You could fork data from an ODbL
> project the same way.  Of course the same requirements for relicensing
> would exist.  You'd have to essentially replace all of the data to
> relicense the data.
>
> Could a fork relicense the Content in a different way?  As I understand it
the Content is unrestricted by any license or copyright claim.

Obviously any collection of the Content that forms a substantial amount
would have to be wrapped in ODbL, so I'm not sure what it would mean in
practice, but it seems that someone could re-publish an ODbL licensed
database that contained Content that was restricted by a no-modifications
clause or a non-commercial clause.

I may not have understood the meaning of the Contributor Terms properly, but
clause 2 seems to waive any rights in the Content from the contributors and
I haven't seen anywhere that asserts any additional rights, so am I right to
infer that the Content is not constrained in any way?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/attachments/20091208/7071400d/attachment.html>


More information about the legal-talk mailing list