[OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Gervase Markham wrote:
>> 1) Because ODbL 1.0 is better than  C-By-SA
> 
> Taking ODbL 0.9 instead of 1.0, I think that's at least debatable, given 
> the issues raised by the ITO lawyer and others. 

No reason for these cautious words. ODbL 0.9 is absolutely unworkable 
because, for example, it does not make sure that interim derivative 
databases are made available (a key element of the sales pitch we've 
been driving to the community), and it makes it impossible to release a 
Produced Work under CC-BY-SA (and so impossible to combine OSM data with 
CC-BY-SA licensed data into a Produced Work).

Anyone suggesting to use ODbL 0.9 un-altered would be out of their mind 
and thus I assume that nobody does. I have no official OSMF statement on 
this in English, but Henk Hoff said on talk-de that OSMF expects the 
current known issues to be ironed out in 1.0, and the phrase "fix 
problems in 1.1" only applies to such problems that are not known yet.

> So the sales pitch to people concerned is "yeah, the new licence has 
> known problems and we don't understand it properly so it has unknown 
> ones too. But it'll all probably get fixed eventually"?

To be honest to people, this would also have to include: "And by the way 
once 1.0 is accepted OSMF has absolutely no influence on how quickly 
license updates are produced."

Rufus Pollock has written over on odc-discuss that he doesn't expect a 
new version of the license to be quick:

> I'd also point out that it will be possible upgrade the license (a
> v2.0 if you like) though that is not likely to happen that quickly
> after a v1.0 release.

He/ODC/OKNF have also, but I cannot find this to insert a proper quote 
at the moment, repeatedly asked for someone from OSM/OSMF to be present 
on their advisory board to help with interpretation and continuous 
development of the license. To my understanding OSMF has not yet 
nominated anyone for this job. Any volunteers?

Bye
Frederik

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