[OSM-legal-talk] Future relicensing in the contributor terms and data imports

[James Livingston]

On 23/08/2010, at 4:22 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Not only the Contributor Terms - the whole project is. Data importing should always be the exception and not the rule.

But is it though? I guess that's the nub of the issue with data imports and licensing - some people are against data imports and some people like them.


Ignoring my personal view on whether imports are good or not, I think that we shouldn't have exceptions to the rule. I think we should either have a rule preventing imports (the *only* exception being for true PD, no copyright holder, data) or we shouldn't have that rule and imports are okay.

If the rule is "no imports", then we should get rid of the Australian Government data, the AND data, the MassGIS data, the French castradal data, and so on. If the rule isn't "no imports", then we need to deal with the fact they are going to happen and determine how to best fit it all in with licensing.

I don't think that having an arbitrary decision about which imports are okay is a goo idea, there should be an objective way of saying that they meet the licensing requirements and any other requirements, and then letting them go ahead.