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

[Grant Slater]

On 30 August 2010 12:04, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Nathan Edgars II <neroute2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> cc-by-sa (and almost? every viral license) allows for forking as long as
>> said fork is under the same license. Note the number of Wikipedia forks and
>> mirrors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks
>
> Also note the number of successful Wikipedia forks.
>
> The situation around licence changes is a big limitation of existing
> open licences. Presumably future licences will include some kind of
> meta-licence, where you both licence your contributions under the
> current licence, and explicitly allow some future mechanism to
> relicence them. Going back and asking contributors for permission is
> never, ever going to be practical.
>

Yes, this is the intent of the section 3 of the Contributor Terms.
It allows a mechanism for the community to adopt a new license in the
future. It is the main point of contension with some of the imported
dataset.

See point 6 of the Contributor Terms summary
http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms_Summary
or section 3 of the full legalese CTs.

/ Grant