[OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer

Matt Amos zerebubuth at gmail.com
Wed May 13 01:36:56 BST 2009


On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 1:15 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> ...and
> Peter Miller's concerns are legit: If you are the licensor, then, under
> 4.4.d...
>
> "Licensors may authorise a proxy to determine compatible licences under
> Section 4.4 a iii. If they do so, the authorised proxy's public
> statement of acceptance of a compatible licence grants You permission to
> use the compatible licence."
>
> ... you get to choose what the compatible licenses are, don't you? So I
> can take the planet file, add a node thereby creating a derivative
> database, publish it with me as the licensor, and under 4.4 d declare
> that I am myself the proxy who determines license compatibility, and one
> second later proclaim that the BSD style license is compatible with
> ODbL. Yay! Where can I sign up ;-)

hmm... that does seem to be a problem. would it solve the problem if
4.4a iii were removed? would that prevent any reasonable use case, to
not be able to distribute a derived database under anything other than
ODbL or later versions "similar in spirit"?

given that OSMF is the original licensor, holding the database rights,
it wouldn't prevent OSMF choosing a new license. assuming, of course,
that the terms of the contributor agreement are upheld regarding
voting, etc...

cheers,

matt




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