[OSM-legal-talk] Copyright Assignment

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

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Gervase Markham wrote:
> The new Contributor Terms contain the equivalent of a joint copyright
> assignment to the OSMF. That makes this recent article by Michael Meeks
> on copyright assignment in free software very relevant:
> http://www.gnome.org/~michael/blog/copyright-assignment.html
> 
> Of course, not all of the pros and cons he raises are relevant to data
> rather than software. But the following sentence struck me:
> 
> "It appears (to me) that choosing a license that can be upgraded and
> bug-fixed in-flight by a responsible steward or proxy substantially
> removes the requirement of assignment for re-licensing."

That probably means you can't use a pre-existing license, which causes a
huge pain in the neck for everyone using your data. For example, you
will need to get a lawyer to read the new license - there won't be any
"case law" you can go on. If you combine with other sources, you may
have to comply with two licenses, and pass that on etc.

In this case, we aren't using a pre-existing license, for other reasons,
but I'd hate another project that uses our license to find themselves
stuck in future because there is some need that doesn't match /their/
requirements...

Robert (Jamie) Munro
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