[OSM-legal-talk] Contributor Terms

Ed Avis eda at waniasset.com
Fri Jul 3 23:58:31 BST 2009


Matt Amos <zerebubuth at ...> writes:

>if it's in the public domain then you already have permission from the
>copyright holder. also, having permission from the rights holder to
>distribute under License X is the same thing as having permission from
>the rights holder to submit the content, no?

Well, not quite; if it's truly in the public domain then there is no copyright
holder, so you do not have permission, nor do you need it.  And permission to
to distribute under licence X does not imply permission to add the data to OSM
where it will be redistributed under 'free and open' licence Y subject to a
vote some time in the future, so we must decide whether to allow this case.

(IMHO, if OSM chooses the ODbL but ends up in the position of rejecting third
party contributions which are themselves licensed under the ODbL, something is
wrong with the licensing policy.)

>>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.
>
>because we've heard it time and time again that people don't want to
>do copyright assignment.

My point is that granting powers to relicense the data is basically equivalent
to copyright assignment (plus certain conditions, as happens when you assign
copyright to the FSF, they promise to keep to a free licence in the future), but
it is better to call a spade a spade.

Still, if there is a strong view that copyright assignment is unacceptable but
something that amounts to basically the same thing expressed with more words is
fine, then I suppose we can go with that.

-- 
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>





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