[OSM-legal-talk] OS Opendata & the new license

[Mike Collinson]

To come back on topic, I don't think this has made legal-talk yet.  Thanks to Jordan Hatcher, whose mail I am re-working:

The new UK Open Government Licence is now out:

<http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/open-government-licence.htm>
<http://www.jordanhatcher.com/2010/uk-open-government-licence-now-out/>

It's essentially an attribution only license, so inter-operable with lots of other licenses. They've explicitly noted interoperability with the Open Data Commons Attribution License:

"These terms have been aligned to be inter-operable with any Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which covers copyright, and Open Data Commons Attribution License, which covers database rights and applicable copyrights."

Two immediate things to note.  I am not sure whether the "any" extends to Open Data Commons Attribution License.  The "Open Data Commons Attribution License" per se is the attribution-only version of ODbL and distinct from it.  I also at the moment have no idea whether the OS will / will have to move to this license or when.

That said,  in my first read I am very encouraged by the new attribution clause which seems far more practical in application than the previous one:  

"acknowledge the source of the Information by including any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence; "

I would speculate that clause 4 of the new CTs covers us. [Which will make me happy as I specifically designed it for governmental organisations]

"4. At Your or the copyright holder’s option, OSMF agrees to attribute You or the copyright holder. A mechanism will be provided, currently a web page <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Attribution>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Attribution. "

That being said,  I'll be pushing for planet dumps and [X]API responses to include an XML element pointing to the same Attribution link to better discharge our distribution responsibilities.


I look forward to any other comments. Anyone see any gotchas?

Mike
LWG
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