[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Community vs. Licensing

Grant Slater openstreetmap at firefishy.com
Tue Aug 31 12:07:14 BST 2010


On 30 August 2010 10:36, Chris Browet <cbro at semperpax.com> wrote:
> As far as I understand the licenses, nobody is permitted to fork the OSM
> data without permissions, and it is thus not truly "open":
> - with CC-BY-SA, you'd have to ask every contributor the permission to fork
> their data (or is only attribution needed? To whom then? The individual
> contributors?)
> - with ODbL, you'd have to ask OSMF, which will be the "owner" of the data.
>
> Please correct me if I'm wrong.
>

Both CC-BY-SA and ODbL allow forking without needing to ask for permission.

The ability to fork an ODbL dataset was a specific question the LWG
asked legal council. Legal council answered in the affirmative that
anyone can fork an ODbL licensed dataset.

Relicensing a CC-BY-SA, ODbL or GPL etc license project would require
asking each of the contributors for permission (or replacing their
contribution).

Regards
 Grant



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