[OSM-legal-talk] ODbL comments from Creative Commons

[Richard Fairhurst]

John Wilbanks wrote:
> Software and culture work pretty well for the promotion of 
> single licenses. But a database of mapping and geo is very different 
> from a database of biology, chemistry, or physics. And it's even 
> more different than a database of cultural works. The promotion 
> of a geomapping set of norms as an "open database license" is 
> part of the reason I have such an allergic reaction to this license. 
> I'd far prefer this be the OSM license, but so far, it's being promoted 
> as a generic solution and as such it's going to be considered by 
> scientists, educators, loop creators, and on and on and on. So 
> comments *must* address concerns that go beyond those of the 
> immediate community.

Oh, I'd agree absolutely that comments on ODbL should be exactly that, and
not specifically comments on OSM's ODbL implementation. 

Nonetheless the CC response, to me, reads very much as one focused solely on
science and education (I understand that Thinh is a Science Commons type).
And given that, I'm not really sure why CC felt the need to restate an
already well-understood point.

The science/education guys already have a suite of licences/waivers - i.e.
CC0/Community Norms etc. - and full marks to them for getting this up and
running while the sharealike proponents are still scrapping over the old
derivative/collective chestnut.

But open data is much more than just science and education. It's more than
OSM; it's more than maps. The assiduous how-late-is-my-sodding-train-today
people on our town website, for example, are creating a database that could
potentially be licensed openly.

Now I _personally_ think this should be licensed permissively, just as I
think the same for OSM. Yet I don't (sadly) have a monopoly on licensing
decisions, and there are a lot of people who would like their data to be
licensed with a copyleft component. They do have a valid argument in the
geodata sphere, and in the train-running sphere, and in many others, because
in each case the market has hitherto been organised solely on commercial
lines - emphatically _not_ the case for science and only partly for
education. Community Norms are great but, even post-crash, there is no
shareholder value in respecting them[1]. That sucks. I know. But it's true.

So that's the hole that ODbL fills. A copyleft data licence for those who
want one. I understand CC's point when you say (paraphrasing) "we think such
a licence would have damaging effects when applied to science and
education", and I agree, but that's not what anyone is suggesting.

cheers
Richard

[1] It's maybe instructive that the market fundamentalists within OSM tend
to prefer sharealike - it fits into their worldview neatly - and the hippy
idealists like me tend to prefer PD. But I may be talking bollocks.
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