[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] License to kill

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> OJ W wrote:
>> Given that maps need to be regularly updated to stay useful, 
>> anyone relying on a CC-BY-SA loophole will be just as SOL if 
>> we change the license in a year as if we changed it in time 
>> for april fools
> 
> Shit, I'd better cancel the 25,000 copies of Waterways World rolling off the
> presses with a largely NPE-derived map of the Chesterfield Canal in, then.

I tend to side with OJW on this. You weren't at the last SOTM (hope to 
see you this time?) but I had a very nice graph of the expected value of 
OSM data once the community stops working on it, and, what shall I say, 
I made it look like "life expectancy of mankind after we lose the bees".

There may be things that don't change (in another discussion someone 
pointed out that house numbers could be among them), but in general, the 
big thing about OSM is not the giant heap of data we have collected 
(others have more!) but the fact that if you use this data, you have on 
your side a whole community of people who constantly update, refine, 
improve, and quality-check the data. I think that without this, OSM is 
relatively un-interesting. If you had to take OSM data as a basis and 
then attempt to buy support for it because the community would not do it 
for you... good luck.

Much like OJW in his argument, I have argued for relaxed wording when it 
comes to the reverse engineering clause in ODbL and for applying 
less-than-maximum care when dealing with the "enforcing the contract" 
issue. My take was that if we have a leak and somehow someone manages to 
create an OSM derivative that is free of any restrictions (maybe by 
first exporting it to a corrupt caribbean nation without database law, 
then employing people to remove the licensing notices and then sending 
the cleaned thing to the USA or so), and if this becomes a problem for 
us, we can deal with that *then* because while we cannot take the data 
that he already has away from him, we can always cut him off from updates.

This makes for an altogether better sleep as opposed to the notion that 
once someone manages to strip off the license then all is lost.

Bye
Frederik

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