[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] ODbL vs CC-by-SA pros and cons

[Nic Roets]

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 1:12 AM, jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com <
jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com> wrote:

>
> > Yes it is true that it is a contract. It is contructed this way to
> > make sure that internationally everyone gets the same deal. European
> > Union has the "Database Directive" but most other countries do not.
> > I strongly believe the ODbL is a copyleft license. The GPL software
> > license was used as a model for creating the ODbL.
>
> copyleft is not a contract, it is copyleft. copyleft is based on
> copyright and not a contract.
> please reread the gpl, read moglen;
> http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/lu-12.html
>

Mike, my understanding (and I think Grant will agree) is that copyleft is an
idea: I publish something in such a way that coerce others into sharing
their work with me. The implementation details of that idea (copyright law,
contract law, unenforceable moral clauses etc) is left to the lawyers and
the managers.

As giving rights to OSMF: It is just a pooling mechanism. Instead of 10,000
contributors each having their own opinion about the next license, we then
only have a few ideas and the decision is made by voting. Then a few
contributors can't block something good because they're having a bad day.
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