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

[David Groom]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rob Myers" <rob at robmyers.org>
To: <legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 5:03 PM
Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] OS Opendata & the new license


>
> On 09/17/2010 03:45 PM, David Groom wrote:
>>
>> In what way are you suggesting OSMF would breach the CT's? I've
>> certainly never suggested they would do such a thing.
>
> You have said that CT 3 allows the data to be published without 
> attribution in the future. I am saying that doing so would break CT 4.

No, I didn't say "CT 3 allows the data to be published without attribution 
in the future", see my point below

>
>> By agreeing to the CT's you "legally" agree to do certain things. One of
>> those is that data you add will not infringe any third parties rights.
>> Where data you are submitting is based on CC-BY-SA type data, one of
>> those "rights" is that there will be attribution on the data. However,
>> as the CT's allow in the future "any free and open licence" to be
>> chosen, then legally you would be in breach of the CT's by adding
>> CC-BY-SA data, because you cant guarantee the attribution requirement
>> which is required under CC-BY-SA.
>
> Oh I see. I'm talking about the Ordnance Survey's BY-compatible licence 
> rather than BY-SA but attribution inheritance is the issue, yes.
>
>> I thought you were saying that you think that it is OK to do add such
>> data, on the assumption that OSMF would remove data in the future.
>
> I'm saying that, assuming it's OK to add such data, the CTs don't say "and 
> later an evil OSM(F) can strip attribution from such data". CT4 says that 
> attribution is a condition for *OSM*. If OSM wished to move to a 
> non-attribution licence then attribution-required data could be removed, 
> but it could not stripped of its attribution.

Please read CT clause 4. All it says is "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...".  So all that the CT's require is 
that OSMF gives attribution  somewhere.  That's all they say.  They say 
nothing more at all.

Now read CC-BY-SA [1] Clause 4, each of the sub paragraphs on Clause 4 all 
require the attribution to be mentioned/distributed/included along with the 
work/collective work/derivative work.

You cant simply rely on the attribution requirements in CT Clause 4 to give 
compatibility with CC-BY-SA, since there is nothing in CT 4 which talks 
about how a user of OSM data is to attribute.  There needs to be extra 
requirements given under whatever licence the OSM data is distributed under. 
Currently that licence is CC-BY-SA 2, so its OK to add CC-BY-SA data.  If 
the licence were to change to "another free and open license" there is no 
guarantee that that licence would have any attribution requirements in it at 
all.

David

[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode

>
> - Rob.
>
> _______________________________________________
> legal-talk mailing list
> legal-talk at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
>
>