[OSM-legal-talk] Contributor Terms

[Matt Amos]

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Frederik Ramm<frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Ed Avis wrote:
>>> 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?
>
> My reading until now was that because ODbL gives the original licensor
> super cow powers (namely of determining which other licenses are deemed
> compatible),

everyone has the super cow powers, but they're cascaded. e.g: if OSMF
is the original licensor and i want to license some derived database
under a different license i have to ask OSMF. if you license it from
me and want to distribute your derived version, then you have to ask
me *and* OSMF. however, i can delegate my super cow powers to a 3rd
party (e.g: OSMF) to make my life easier.

> it must be avoided to pass on these super cow powers to
> evil people like me (Fred sets up free world database, licenses it ODbL
> with himself at the license root, imports full OSM database without
> asking anyone, then decrees under section 4.4.e that for his project,
> ODbL is compatible with PD, and this makes the OSM data PD.)

indeed. this is why the upstream compatibility decision is necessary.
much as i'd *love* to have a PD-OSM (not the one with specially named
zip files on an FTP server, but just OSM in the public domain), there
were many in the community who were against PD/BSD style licenses.
hence, why ODbL is an SA/GPL style license.

> But please let someone from the license working group say something to
> this before I confuse everyone.
>
>> 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.
>
> Sh, don't say that too loud, it has taken us PD advocates a lot of work
> to sneak that bit in!

no, that's not what it says at all. it says OSMF can grant any license
they want as long as it is "free" and "open" **and approved by a vote
of active contributors**.

if you really want PD, or you really don't want PD: join OSMF, keep
your email up-to-date and continue mapping! then your voice will be
heard (twice).

cheers,

matt