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

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Francis Davey wrote:
> My suggestion - which I believe has been/is being chewed over by the
> LWG - is that the CT's make an alternative arrangement for
> contributors who want to contribute material that is licensed under
> some other licence.

Any future license change would then be constrained to the common 
denominator of all these licenses *or* risk repeating all the data loss 
whining that we're seeing now.

The question I am asking myself is: Is the ability to import as much 
government data as possible really worth the hassle? And my personal 
answer is a clear no; because to me, the value of imported data is very 
small, almost neglibile compared to data contributed by members.

I am not against imports in general; I believe there are some isolated 
cases where a government or other dataset has really helped the project. 
  But I don't see any individual import, or the ability to import data 
at all, as crucial for OSM's success.

I am especially surprised about the mood in the UK community. The UK is 
where OSM started because David didn't want to be bossed around by 
Goliath any longer; it is this "let's show the OS what a bunch of hobby 
mappers can do" attitude that has given OSM much of its energy in the 
early days. But today, it seems to me that half of the UK community is 
of the opinion that OSM is dead if it cannot use OS "open" data. If that 
had been the mood from day one, OSM would never have started at all.

I firmly believe that collecting third-party geodata into an user 
editable pool is NOT the main purpose of OSM, and even detracts us.

Thus, I would never accept future liabilities in return for being 
allowed to import a third-party data source.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"