[OSM-legal-talk] Best license for future tiles?

[Rob Myers]

On 11/18/2010 10:19 AM, Ed Avis wrote:
> Rob Myers<rob at ...>  writes:
>
>>> Yes, this is one of the more unpleasant aspects of the licence, at least under
>>> some interpretations.  It's allowed to make proprietary, all-rights-reserved
>>> map renderings, but if you want to produce a truly CC-licensed or public
>>> domain one you can't.  (This refers to the no-tracing restrictions; an
>>> attribution requirement is more reasonable.)
>>
>> You can produce CC-licensed work from ODbL/DbCL data.
>
> That's what you say, and I hope it is true.  But others claim different things;

It is true.

If you have any reason to believe that it isn't, do ask on odc-discuss, 
where you will receive a more authoritative answer than I can give:

http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/odc-discuss

I'd personally regard it as a disaster if copyleft works couldn't be 
produced from ODbL data.

> some say that even once the work such as a printed map has been produced and
> distributed under CC-BY-SA or even CC0 terms, it is still tainted somehow, such
> that some legal force field prevents you from freely tracing it or otherwise
> turning it into machine-readable form.

That is a kind of mass hysterical folk misunderstanding of the 
requirement to make derived databases available.

If someone tries to launder or teleport ODbL data using produced works, 
they should and will fail. Derived Databases and Produced Works are 
different enough conceptually that this shouldn't be a problem in 
practice. I've discussed some of this on odc-discuss so I really do 
recommend looking at the archives there.

> If this definitely isn't the case then it would be good to see a definitive
> statement to that effect, preferably attached to the licence itself.

I think that's excessive. The licence isn't meant to be its own 
educational materials or to contain its own FUD.

I do think the ODbL FAQ needs extending though.

> I know it sucks to have to refute every canard that somebody somewhere comes up
> with about the bogeyman ODbL, but this is in my view one of the big problems with
> the licence: it's so vague and complicated that if you ask three people about
> what it permits you get four answers.

I've seen conversations with similar levels of fear, uncertainty and 
doubt about the GPL, the FDL and various CC licences over the years.

I don't believe the ODbL is worse than BY-SA or the GPL in terms of 
readability and of clarity of intent. The formatting is certainly better 
than BY-SA 2.0 unported. ;-)

- Rob.