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

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:50 PM, andrzej zaborowski <balrogg at gmail.com>wrote:

> On 25 July 2010 12:21, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> > TimSC wrote:
> >> We should also get an official statement from OSMF that they will not
> >> assert their database rights on our contributions.
> >
> > Of course if OSMF were to say that they don't assert database right on
> any
> > contribution made by PD people then that would be great. I am not sure if
> it
> > is possible legally though, because the very nature of database right is
> to
> > protect the whole database - once you deal with database right you don't
> > deal with individual contributions or data items any more.
>
> Maybe a statement would be valid saying that the OSMF will not assert
> any rights (or more precisely allow usage under the terms of PDDL) on
> any database it releases that contains only the result of
> contributions by the PD users.


That sounds about right.  Moreover, the OSMF could agree to regularly
provide database dumps which contain only the result of contributions by
those "PD users".  Yes, "once you deal with database right you don't deal
with individual contributions or data items any more".  But that doesn't
stop OSMF from releasing two different databases, one which is PDDL and one
which is ODbL (three if you count the third one which is CC-BY-SA).

OTOH, it doesn't seem likely to be worth it.  Presumably PDDL would only
apply to contributions for which the entire chain of contributors all agreed
to PD, and one single contributor who doesn't agree breaks the chain (*).
So the amount of PD content is not likely to be worth bothering.  If people
want to create a PD version OSM, they're much better off starting their own
project, where they don't have to worry about ODbL contributors messing with
their clean chains of PD-only data.

(*) Barring a 2/3 vote, that seems to be the spirit if not letter of section
3 of the contributor terms.
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