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

[Simon Ward]

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 01:40:23AM +0200, Nic Roets wrote:
> 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.

Copyright is typically used to restrict distribution.  You can only
distribute copyright materials with permission from the copyright
holders (not counting exceptions to copyright).

Copyleft explicity uses copyright to ensure that freedoms to use, copy
and distribute a work are passed on to everyone who obtains the work.
With copyleft, no further restrictions are added (apart from those that
prevent you from restricting the rights of others to copy, use and
redistribute the work).

For Openstreetmap under the ODbL + DbCL licences:

There may be copyright in the actual data, so the DbCL covers that.
Where it is deemed that there is no copyright, that licence is
effectively meaningless, but since there are no restrictions provided by
copyright in the first place it doesn’t matter.  (This licence does not
attempt to reciprocate the freedoms, so is not copyleft.)

There may be copyright in the compilation of the database, and in Europe
there is database right, which restricts copying and distribution of
databases (and parts of them).  The ODbL covers these, and gives
permission to use, copy and redistribute the database.

Where compilations are not covered by copyright (are there any places?)
the parts of the licence covering copyright are probably null, but then
there was no copyright anyway so no restrictions on copying and
distribution were there (from copyright) in the first place.

Where there is no concept of database right, the database right parts of
the ODbL are null, but then there were no restrictions from database
rights in the first place.

That would be copyleft (and “database left”).

The ODbL goes further by using contract law to either enforce freedoms
to use, copy and distribute in the same way as the “missing” copyright
or database right would have allowed, or to add restrictions where there
were none anyway, depending on how you see it.

Simon
-- 
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that works.—John Gall
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