[OSM-legal-talk] OBbL and forks

[80n]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:14 AM, 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.
>
> Matt, could you explain why it's an important difference please?
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