[OSM-legal-talk] [DRAFT] Contributor Terms 1.2

[Anthony]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 7:31 AM, Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com> wrote:
> Francis Davey <fjmd1a at ...> writes:
>
>>>No, the data contributed to OSM must be licensed to OSMF under the
>>>contributor terms:
>>>
>>>"You hereby grant to OSMF and any party that receives Your Contents a
>>>worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable licence
>
>>> The rider in section three restricts what OSMF can do with the contents but
>>> it doesn't give any contributor the right to agree to the above clause
>>> unless they have full ownership of that content.
>>
>>Quite. There's probably a missing "to the extent that you are able" or
>>similar before the "You hereby grant", or some similar dependant
>>wording. It is only a draft so far, my understanding is that its
>>clearly intended that (i) to the extent that the contributor has
>>copyright etc in the contributed data, they license OSMF to use it and
>>(ii) to the extent that they don't, they are asked (but not required
>>to warrant) that the contributor makes sure it is compatible with the
>>current licence.
>
> If that's the intention it is entirely sensible, but quite different to what
> I and others had understood!
>
> The terms should say what they mean, and unambiguously enough that there can be
> no dispute.

The terms should say what they mean, and unambiguously.  There's
always going to be room for misinterpretation and therefore dispute.

It seems to me to go without saying that when you grant someone a
license you are only granting them a license on your own work, not
anyone else's.  But obviously this should be reviewed by a copyright
lawyer to ensure that's the case (and to fix it so it is the case, if
not).

> So if the contributor terms are meant to say 'you make a best effort to ensure
> your contribution can be distributed under our current licences, even though
> it need not be compatible with future licences we may choose, and we will take
> the trouble to remove it if so' then they should say that.

I didn't see anyone say anything about "best effort", though there is
a clause in square brackets which clarifies this (and I'm not sure if
it's meant to be in or out of the final version):  "If you contribute
data which is the intellectual property of someone else, it should be
compatible with our current licence terms. You do not need to
guarantee that it is, but you risk having your contribution deleted
(see below) if it is not."

> On the other hand
> if the intention is 'you grant a perpetual licence do do anything at all, so
> we can therefore redistribute under practically any free licence including PD,
> and you have made sure that your contributions are compatible with that' then
> this must be made doubly clear, with an extra redundant paragraph if needed.

I don't see any reason to believe that's the case.  The stated
intention is "you grant a perpetual licence do do anything at all",
nothing about "we can therefore redistribute under practically any
free licence including PD", and nothing about "you have made sure that
your contributions are compatible with that".  Why are you adding
things that aren't there?

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 9:30 PM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
> So I'm particularly interested in hearing from those
> who criticize CT v1.0.  What do you think of the current draft of the
> contributor terms?  Is this an improvement?

It is a tremendous improvement.

> What aspects could be further improved and how?

Get rid of clause 3 and the references to it.