[OSM-legal-talk] Copyright Assignment

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Henk Hoff <osm at toffehoff.nl> wrote:

> If there is a need to sue, we (the Foundation) will sue.
>

Hence "not copyright assignment, but basically the same thing".  You give up
the right to sue, and the OSMF gets the right to sue.

Or, as Michael Meeks said: "Various other methods are used to achieve the
same effect [as copyright assignment]. Some common ones - are asking for a
very liberal license: BSD-new, MIT/X11, or even Public Domain on the
contribution, and then including it into the existing, more restrictively
licensed work."

If some corporation makes a large donation to OSMF, and OSMF decides not to
sue them for something that I consider to be unacceptable use of data I have
contributed, there's nothing I can do.  I've given them (and everyone else
in the world) a perpetual, irrevocable license to do anything.  In the mean
time, if that corporation wants to sue *me*, for using its data plus some
copyrightable improvements, it's free to do so.  I can't even counter-sue as
a defense.

That's completely unacceptable to me.  YMMV.
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