[OSM-legal-talk] Size of NearMap Contribution

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

John Smith wrote:
>> In my eyes the ODbL and CT are part and parcel and I refer to both as "the
>> license change". I don't think that you can separate them.
> 
> Is that because you don't think people will swallow the CTs unless
> they are a package deal?

No, my statement above is not politically or rhetorically motivated. I 
believe, and have explained the message from which you are quoting, that 
it is not legally possible for individuals to contribute non-database 
data to a database without a contractual agreement - the CT in our case.

If you are employed in a company that produces a database, then that is 
probably either written in either your employment contract or in the 
labour laws of your jurisdiction (that the employer gets to do with the 
data what they want, and thus can release the data as a database under a 
license of their choice). But mappers are not employed by OSMF, so we 
need some sort of contract that says "I, the mapper, allow OSMF to make 
a database from my data and publish it".

>> The reason is that ODbL is a license for databases, and what the individual
>> contributor contributes is not (or at least: not usually!) a database.
> 
> I know what they are, but they don't have to be joined at the hip...

OSMF cannot publish any data as part of OSM without permission. The CT 
is about getting that permission or assuring that it has been given; so 
yes, I do believe that both are "joined at the hip".

(Not, of course, this particular version of the CT, if that's what 
you're getting at - *some* sort of CT that enables OSMF to publish the 
data as part of a database.)

Bye
Frederik