[OSM-legal-talk] Contributor Terms

[Ed Avis]

Frederik Ramm <frederik at ...> writes:

>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.

But if OSM also adoped ODbL then no re-licensing would be necessary.
Isn't this the whole point of copyleft or share-alike licensing?

If it is not possible to take one ODbL-licensed work, and combine it
with another ODbL-licensed work to make a third ODbL-licensed work,
then either the ODbL is even worse than it first appears, or the
proposed OSM implementation of it is flawed.

>>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.

The current wording of the page says that the OSMF can grant any
licence they want as long as it is 'free' and 'open', which hardly
rules out the above scenario.

-- 
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>