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

[Robert Whittaker (OSM)]

Francis Davey <fjmd1a at gmail.com> wrote:
> My specific point was that *if* you want the CT's to be permissive
> about importation, then it is fairer on contributors and clearer to
> provide an express list of compatible licenses - to avoid contributors
> having to make the judgment themselves.

I think you should do this even if you don't want the CT's to be more
permissive. Otherwise you will still get people thinking that data
licensed under license X data is ok to add, or having to agonise over
whether license Y is compatible or not. (Witness the arguments over
whether people think CC-By or the OS OpenData License is compatible
with the CTs.) Even if the normative list of compatible licenses is
extremely short, it would still be of value. (Or more useful in this
case, would be the implied list of incompatible licenses.)

Presumably there could be a list of what the OSMF deems compatible
licenses with the current CTs, but the problem here is that it's not
formally linked to the CTs, and it's not clear who would be
responsible if the list turned out to be incorrect. Even though the
advice has come from OSMF, it would still be the mapper who has
declared that the data was ok to add under the CTs.

Even with the 1.1 draft CTs, (
https://docs.google.com/View?id=dd9g3qjp_81272pvt54 ) there is still
ambiguity in what "the copyright owner has given you permission to do
so" means. IMO would be better to replace this with the options:
either to have the copyright holder agree explicitly to the CT terms,
or to have the license the data is released under appear on an
official  "approved license list". This way there is little room for
error. As a mapper, you either get the copyright holder to agree to
the CTs, or you check if their license is on the list. OSMF can also
be much more confident that mappers have interpreted the CTs
correctly, and have only added data under licenses that will allow
whatever is deemed to be an appropriate amount of flexibility in the
future.

If OSMF want to impose non-standard restrictions on what can be
included to give them more flexibility in the future, it seems right
that they should be the ones taking responsibility for checking the
compatibility of licenses with the CTs.

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker