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

[Francis Davey]

On 18 November 2010 10:14, Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com> wrote:
>
> OK, in that case this needs to be clarified too, since we have all confused
> ourselves on this list, and if we have done so others might too.
>
> So, in that case, if you must give sufficient permission to allow OSMF to choose
> (pretty much) any licence it wants in future, it would not be possible to add
> third-party data released under anything less than fully-permissive terms, even
> if it happened to be compatible with the licence OSM uses at present.

No. That's not the case and on this point the draft licence *is* clear
enough in my view. Its important to read the existing draft as is,
rather than recalling what earlier drafts said.

The existing draft aims to allow:

- the addition of data that the contributor themselves can licence -
in this case the contributor grants a perpetual licence to OSMF to
relicense it under whatever current licence is being used (subject to
conditions that are being discussed - but "free and open" of some
kind), you need the CT to license the data somehow, or OSMF won't know
what they can do with it

- addition of data licensed under some other licence which looks like
(to the contributor) it is compatible with the OSMF's current licence
- there is no need for the contributor to be sure about this, but OSMF
makes it clear that this is what it would like

- data of the first kind can be relicensed later, data of the second
can only be relicensed by OSMF if a future licence is compatible with
the data's original licence conditions - a judgment call OSMF may have
to make if/when it does that relicensing exercise

I'd prefer some way of saying "I got this data from X", much as
wikipedia does for image uploads.

I realise there are various levels of disagreement as to whether this
is the right policy. I really am a neutral (and I hope not unhelpful)
observer trying to offer what skills I have to make this work right.

>
> No, me neither.  (Well I do have a view, which is that granting extra rights to a
> privileged body such as the OSMF is a bad idea, and we should all simply license
> our contributions under an agreed share-alike licence - but that is not part of
> this discussion.)  I'm just trying to winkle out exactly what the proposed CTs
> are intended to mean.
>

OK. I understand where you are coming from and thank you for keeping
this focussed.

-- 
Francis Davey