[OSM-legal-talk] OBbL and forks

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Matt Amos <zerebubuth at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:14 PM, andrzej zaborowski <balrogg at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 2009/12/8 Matt Amos <zerebubuth at gmail.com>:
> >> On Tuesday, December 8, 2009, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 7:40 AM,  <mapping at sheerman-chase.org.uk <javascript:_e({},
> 'cvml', 'mapping at sheerman-chase.org.uk');>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> A quick question for the legal people: does ODbL allow the project to
> >>> be forked?
> >>>
> >>> Technically, it does.  But remember that the OSMF is granted a special
> license in addition to the ODbL.  Any fork would be at a major disadvantage
> as it wouldn't have that special license.
> >>
> >> Yes, because the osmf has a direct relationship with the contributors,
> >> and any fork wouldn't. This is similar to the fsf, which asks its
> >> contributors to assign copyright, giving it rights that any fork
> >> purely under the GPL doesn't have.
> >
> > Right, so this is one thing that isn't being made so clear.  It's been
> > said multiple times that the ODbL transition in summary is the spirit
> > of CC-By-SA taken and made into a proper license for a database.  But
> > actually it's the spirit of CC-By-SA + copyright assignment, like that
> > of Mozilla and others, which makes a difference.
>
> it's in that spirit, but it's also worth pointing out that we aren't
> asking for copyright assignment or any other rights assignment. that's
> a subtle, but often important difference.
>

The Contributor Terms actually still aren't clear about what exactly *is*
happening.  The ODbL only applies to the database as a whole, not the
individual data.  The individual data is supposed to be licensed under a
different license.

Also, the ODbL is largely based on contract law, not copyright law.  Who
would have standing to sue for breach of contract should the ODbL be
breached?  All contributors, or only the OSMF?
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