[OSM-legal-talk] ODbL: incompatibility issues

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

    until recently I was under the impression that with the "Produced 
Work" freedom we would finally be able to create, say, a map that 
combines content from other "copyleft" licenses like CC-BY-SA-NC or GFDL 
with OpenStreetMap content.

Not so, it turns out; the "Produced Work" freedom allows us to combine 
OSM data *only* with other data whose license does not prohibit the 
addition of constraints, because ODbL mandates that we add the "reverse 
engineering leads to ODbL licensing" rule.

So, while using OSM data together with commercially licensed data, or 
together with CGIAR "no commercial use" data, or together with some 
"academic use only" data to form a Produced Work is possible, I still 
cannot use OSM data together with data from a CC-BY-SA-NC source (for 
example) because CC-BY-SA-NC prohibits the addition of the "reverse 
engineering" clause.

Can this be alleviated somehow?

I can see that, theoretically, allowing even the smallest bit of our 
database to get out without the reverse-engineering clause attached 
*could* lead to the database being re-built under a different license, 
piecemeal, by someone, somewhere.

But I do not think this can be an issue in practice (too much work 
involved). Also, even if someone managed to somehow re-assemble today's 
planet file smuggled through some reverse engineering loophole, such a 
one-time act doesn't get him far; he would have to implement the whole 
thing as a continuous process to profit from changes and updates to OSM 
- and if that should really happen then we can simply use our licence 
upgrade super powers and write a clause that prohibits exactly what he 
is doing without affecting legitimate other users.

Maybe we can establish a slightly more pragmatic rule that opens up the 
possibility of making Produced Works from OSM plus other copyleft 
licenses. (I'm prepared to point the finger at them and say it's your 
fault that users cannot mix yours and ours, but I would much prefer to 
simply have a good solution that works for everyone instead of pointing 
fingers.)

Bye
Frederik

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