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

[Ed Avis]

Rob Myers <rob at ...> writes:

>>But if what is meant is that you grant an unlimited licence as far as your
>>own rights are concerned - but you don't make any representation about other
>>rights that might apply to your contribution - then this must be made clear.
>
>That sounds like a good idea. Please provide a patch. 

If this is the intended policy (*), I suggest some wording like

2 Rights granted.

2 (a) Rights You hold

This section refers to any copyright, database right or related right in the
Contents which is held by you personally, or where the owner of the right has
given you full authority to grant or waive it on their behalf.

Subject to Section 3 and 4 below, You hereby grant to OSMF and any party that
receives Your Contents a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, (etc etC)

2 (b) Rights held by others

If third parties also hold rights in the Contents, You are not required to grant
an unlimited licence to these rights as in 2 (a).  However, you warrant to the
best of your knowledge that the additional rights holders have granted
sufficient permission for the Contents to be distributed by OSMF under the
(insert current licence(s) here), and that this permission is worldwide and
perpetual.

If it turns out that there are third party rights for which permission has not
been given, we may delete the Contents and any further map information derived
from them.

If in the future OSMF wishes to distribute the OSM map under some terms other
than (insert current licence(s) here), and the permission from third party
rights owners is not sufficient to do that for the Contents, then we may delete
the Contents and any further map information derived from them.

Section 5 also needs a small change.

(*) But is this really the policy wanted?  So an individual contributor has no
choice - they have to grant an unlimited licence and suck up any future licence
changes.  But a third party can veto licence changes - or insist on data
deletion, which is more or less the same thing.  Why the difference in
treatment?