[OSM-legal-talk] Copyright Assignment

[80n]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 5:08 AM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:

>
> Although, for the most part, CC-BY-SA does have roughly the same effect in
> all jurisdictions.  You can do whatever you want with the geodata, so long
> as you don't legally restrict others from using the geodata you add.
>
> In jurisdictions where geodata is protected, CC-BY-SA ensures that any
> derivative works are under CC-BY-SA.  In jurisdictions where geodata isn't
> protected, any geodata which is added to the work can't be legally
> restricted from reuse anyway.
>
> This seems to me to be quite a crucial point.

The purpose of the share-alike principle is to enable derived work to be fed
back into the main body.  It's this feedback mechanism that makes the whole
project work so well.  In strong copyright jurisdictions then the law
facilitates this.  In weak copyright jurisdictions the law won't prevent us
from taking back.  SA is just strong enough to do the job it needs to do.

By comparison, ODbL+Contributor Terms has properties that break this
principle.  A derived work can not be fed back into OSM unless the author
agrees to the contributor terms.  If the author deliberately doesn't do
this, or just can't be bothered to, then the feedback mechanism breaks.

80n
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