[OSM-legal-talk] legal FAQ license

[Richard Weait]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 2:05 PM, David Groom <reviews at pacific-rim.net> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "M?rtin Koppenhoefer"
> <dieterdreist at gmail.com>
> To: "Licensing and other legal discussions." <legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 3:44 PM
> Subject: [OSM-legal-talk] legal FAQ license
>
>
>>
>> reading the legal FAQ for the license change:
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License_FAQ
>>
>> there is a paragraph that looks strange to me:
>>
>> "... - we may take the view that those who have made small
>> contributions, but cannot be contacted, would relicence their data
>> under the new licence. We will enable them to contact us at a later
>> date."
>>
>> this part looks like a problem to me, as it is opt-out instead of the
>> always proclaimed opt-in, or have I misunderstood this? Or is this
>> refering to anonymous edits only?
>>
>
> Unfortunately the wiki seems to offer conflicting views on what might
> happen.
>
> The section you quoted [1] does indeed seem to indicate that contributions
> from some people who have not responded will be left in the database.
>
> However further up the same page [2] it says " remove any data from any
> users who do not respond or respond negatively (the hard bit) ", and again
> here [3] it says "What do we do with the people who have Declined or not
> responded? Their contributions would not be available under the future ODbL
> version of the database. "
>
> David

David, what would you suggest?  Can you see a situation where
discarding the data is not required in the case of non-response?

For example, a 'bot that does nothing but fix spelling in keys,
changes Amenity to amenity, but the 'bot does not answer the mandatory
relicensing question.  Should we revert their changes back to Amenity?

As another example, a user adds one POI, perhaps their business, to
OSM and nothing else.  They never respond.  Do we remove the data?

As another example, an editor makes many mass edits around the planet,
arbitrarily changing keys/values to match their recent wiki postings,
then answers "no" to relicensing.

What do you suggest is the right answer for each of these situations?
Would your answer have universal support from the community?  Can you
create some other situations and responses that will find universal
support from the community?