[OSM-legal-talk] Todays (thurs) license working group call

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

SteveC wrote:
> We also want to get a bunch of questions answered from a  
> legal PoV and to that end we'd like your help in pulling together  
> things from the use cases and open issues in to a concise list to be  
> emailed. 

Peter, Matt and others have done an excellent job at cleaning up and 
structuring the Use Cases page on the Wiki. I have read all of the use 
cases, made a few fixes, and I think they now sum up almost everything 
that is important to us (plus perhaps one or two fringe issues but I 
guess they were important for *someone* so hey).

 From my point of view, "Use Cases" is now *the* central page for a 
lawyer to look at and to give feedback to; while "Open Issues" does 
contain a few interesting topics but also some wider-ranging rants like 
"do we really need all this nonsense" which are probably of limited 
interest to a lawyer asked to give advice on ODbL.

I did something for which those who cleaned up Use Cases might hate me; 
I pulled in three major items from "Open Issues" into a new section 
called "Definitions" on the "Use Cases" page. They are not use cases 
proper, but reading the use cases I found that many of them, in one way 
or another, circled around the questions of the grey area between "what 
is derivative db/collected db", "what is derivative db/produced work" 
and "what is a substantial extract". All these questions were on the 
"open issues" page because they are open issues; but it is to be 
expected that they will be answered or the answer at least touched in 
response to many of the use cases.

So, I've now placed them at the bottom of the Use Cases page and it is 
not unlikely that by the time the lawyer has looked through the use 
cases s/he will already have answered these questions. Take it as a kind 
of checklist.

The "Use Cases" page is perhaps not as concise as you (Steve) would have 
liked when you asked for a "list to be emailed" but I think it is the 
best we can do without loss of information.

Bye
Frederik

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