[OSM-legal-talk] Usage of ODbL

[Rob Myers]

On 09/30/2010 12:10 PM, Ed Avis wrote:
>
> However, under the proposed licence change and contributor terms, OSM would not
> be able to participate fully in this commons.  Although the ODbL would allow
> others to take the OSM data and combine it with other ODbL or permissive-licensed
> data sources, the OSM project could not do likewise.  Without extra permission,
> we could not incorporate ODbL data into our map, even if it had been derived from
> OSM in the first place.

Commons are for people. Share-alike exists to protect people's ability 
to always use resources in the commons. Not to return resources to 
upstream projects.

Consider the example of the GNU project, which doesn't accept code just 
on the basis of it being licenced under the GPL despite being the 
project that licence was written for.

If OSM data ends up being part of different map/geodata "distros" 
containing other data in derivative databases or produced works, that 
would be a similar situation.

- Rob.