[OSM-legal-talk] Proposal to update the Use Cases page

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Sun Mar 1 22:59:49 GMT 2009


Hi,

Peter Miller wrote:
> I am not familiar with that case, but I think we should ensure that  
> everything in the FAQ/Use Cases is confirmed by the license,

That's not what I had in mind. Or let me put is this way: My suggestion 
of having a not-really-legally-binding "interpretation document" was a 
bridge I was trying to build that would make it possible to use the 
license as-is.

OJW, I don't think such a document would be completely worthless if it 
can be proven that the community acceptance of the license was based not 
only on the license text but also on the interpretation document. If 
someone says: "It is a bit unclear whether a PNG file is still 
considered a database for the purpose of the ODbL, so I followed the 
interpretation issued by OSMF when they asked the mappers to re-license" 
then this is surely a stronger basis than someone saying "I simply used 
the interpretation I liked best."

Peter, if we say that such a document is not adding anything but 
everything it says has to be backed up by the license, then this means 
that the license draft we have before our eyes needs to be amended - and 
amended by more than a few words or capitalisations. This would almost 
certainly throw us off the ambitious track set out by the working group 
(end of comments 20 March, release of final version 27 March) - given 
that we now find so many things ajar with a license that took years to 
build, it is unlikely that the license will be magically fixed to 
address our concerns within one week.

(We could of course, non-lawyers that we are, make an attempt to write 
the things we believe are missing into the license and then leave it to 
Jordan whether he chooses to implement them for his 1.0 version or not, 
and in the case of "not" we'd then have to delay our acceptance vote 
which is currently scheduled for March 31st until he provides a 1.1 
version.)

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"




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