[OSM-legal-talk] Contributor Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Ed Avis wrote:
> Should say: You agree to only add contents for which you are the copyright
> holder, *or which are in the public domain*, *or which already have permission
> from the rights holder to distribute under Licence X*, or where you have explicit
> permission from the rights holder to submit the content.
> 
> (Licence X being whatever licence OSM is using... so if another organization
> releases data under CC-BY-SA or under ODbL or whatever, clearly it must be
> permitted to add that to OSM.  If not, something is a bit wrong.)

ODbL, as fast as I understand, does not permit re-licensing, which means 
that even if you have other data that is ODbL licensed, you cannot 
upload it to OSM without express permission of the license holder.

> If you want to be able to do future relicensing exercises then why not simply ask
> for copyright assignment?  It is more honest that way I think.

Yes but it also requires more trust from the mappers. If OSMF has 
copyright assigned, then Google can subvert the OSMF and have the OSMF 
board decide to grant Google a full commercial license with no strings 
attached for the symbolic price of $1.

Bye
Frederik