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

[SteveC]

On 23 Mar 2009, at 05:47, John Wilbanks wrote:

>
>> From: Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>
>> Though I have a lot of time for CC in general, and agree with their  
>> general
>> stance that PD is the ideal way to go, I don't really find that a  
>> very
>> useful response.
>>
>> I count 20 occurrences of the word "science", "scientists" or  
>> similar; eight
>> of "education" and "educator"; but not a single one of "map" or  
>> "geo".
>
> If this were the "Open Street Map License" and not the "Open Database
> License" it's unlikely we would have such a strong opinion. It's one
> thing for a community of practice to embed its norms in its own  
> license.
> It's quite another to create such a license and promote its use for  
> all
> databases.
>
> Though I disagree fundamentally with share-alike on data for a lot of
> reasons, I disagree even more with the promotion of the idea of
> licensing into data generally. This isn't simply about OSM writing its
> own license - it's about the promotion of the idea that complex
> licensing in the name of "freedom" is a good idea, and that's going to
> have effects that reach far beyond your community, indeed, into places
> where the public domain has to date been the vital steward of data  
> sharing.
>
> 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.

John I would assert that you're more worried about perceived  
competition for your licenses, and that there are people out there who  
want to be able to keep attribution and share-alike. I appreciate that  
you're trying to stop people opening pandoras box and shoe horn the  
cornucopia of people who might want a database license in to the PDDL  
before they can figure out there are other options... but ultimately  
it's not going to work. Someone else, somewhere will try to do another  
ODbL even if you succeed stopping this one and ultimately people will  
use it.

The simplest use case I can think of are all the companies who have  
datasets that they're be happy with something like BY-SA but would  
never release anything under PDDL. It's not going to fly to just tell  
them all that they 'should' release things in to the public domain.

Best

Steve