[OSM-legal-talk] Age timeout for the license protection (quicker to PD than 50/70/90 years)

[Dirk-Lüder Kreie]

Hi

Would it be possible to have users agree on a sort of timeout for their
data rights?

Problems I want to solve are:
- Users not reachable, because they leave the project, die, are
otherwise unresponsive, but fundamental license changes need to be
agreed on. (maybe the ODBL will not work out and we need something
completely different)
- getting the free-est (word?) data possible, while still ensuring that
people not agreeing to the entire project being CC0/PD/whatever have to
fear their work is used by the "big evil guys" for their own profit alone.

So basically balance the interests of the PD crowd and the "we need
protection from evil use" crowd. And I don't mean that in a derogatory
sense, as I would still put myself in that latter category.

Say you would agree that your Edits enter the Public Domain after three
or five (or whatever, but best to keep it as short as possible) years.
This would negate usability for a lot of "bad" usecases (Big Mapping
Corporation just using our data, because the new stuff isn't new anymore
when they can finally use it in their stuff with proprietary license),
but older data is automatically free to the world, even if the users
leave the project, or the project forks or dies (god forbid!), or
whatever, and you can do literally all sorts of cool stuff with the data
without worry about licensing stuff.
Maybe add a moral clause/obligation (or whatever it's called) to mention
OSM when using data directly after the 3-year timeout.

Just a thought.
-- 

Dirk-Lüder "Deelkar" Kreie
Bremen - 53.0952°N 8.8652°E

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