[OSM-legal-talk] PD declaration non binding?

[TimSC]

On 25/07/10 01:17, Richard Weait wrote:
>
>> Sure, they all might the great guys as of now, but suppose OSM becomes
>> importatnt enough to big players, who says TeleAtlas or Google or someone
>> won't get say new 1000 members in OSMF and have a strong majority of votes
>> to pass any such thing? it's not like such things never happend (just
>> rembemer OOXML ballot-stuffing at ISO when Microsoft managed to buy out
>> majority of new country representatives just to get fasttracked)
>>      
> That's why it is important to be at least minimally aware of OSMF and
> the people and activities involved.  If you don't tell them what you
> want, they can only do the things that you want by coincidence.
>
> This appears to address Tim's concern.
>
>    
I am not sure exactly what you are proposing currently. I also don't 
understand how the contributor terms relate to this situation. My mental 
picture is currently: Richard and Frederik observed that a database 
right is probably owned by someone and that someone might be (partly) 
OSMF. They were relatively optimistic that OSMF is nice and would not 
assert their rights, if any. Matija Nalis pointed out this is no guide 
to their future behavior. I still think we should have the wiki page say 
ticking the PD option has some effect, but there are some legal hurdles 
before anyone attempts to make use of it. We should also get an official 
statement from OSMF that they will not assert their database rights on 
our contributions.

> Will you support the License upgrade?
>    
For reasons I have already stated, I am anti-ODbL. But my support will 
be pragmatic, depending on the likely outcome of support or refusal.

TimSC