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

SteveC steve at asklater.com
Wed Mar 25 17:36:03 GMT 2009


On 22 Mar 2009, at 06:08, 80n wrote:

> Thinh Nguyen of Creative Commons writes:
> While some complexities are introduced by differences in background  
> legal doctrines, others are introduced by the ODbL scheme itself.
>
> These two points about the complexity of the ODbL are important ones  
> that probably haven't been discussed as much as they should have been.
>
> As if the ODbL is not complex enough, when you add in the FIL and  
> all the other considerations that apply to the practical  
> implementation within the OSM context (eg click-through access for  
> mirrored databases etc) then we have something that, in my opinion,  
> is near to being unusable.
> Given that we have a goal of going from 100,000 contributors to 1  
> million complexity is something that will cost the community a lot.   
> On my personal list of issues complexity is one that I consider to  
> be a show stopper.

I'm sure you're not suggesting that the internet, space travel or  
openstreetmap should not have been started because they were  
'complex'. The complexity arguments are largely superfluous. I don't  
understand the GPL fully, let alone v3. That doesn't make it a 'show  
stopper'. I get in my car every day and drive to work without knowing  
how the engine management system works but it's not a 'show stopper'.

I think you should work backwards with their comments from "Open Data  
Sharing Should Converge on the Public Domain" and the key 'should' to  
where their position is.

Best

Steve




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