[OSM-legal-talk] feedback requested

[Ed Avis]

<mike at ...> writes:

>Any chance of you changing your decline now, that is the easiest way
>of decreasing deletions?

I am still hopeful of finding a way forward that will mean the OSM
data can continue to be distributed under a licence that I would
consider free and open.  Although Creative Commons or public domain
would be ideal, they are not the only choices.  In the light of the
legal reports I have shared with the LWG, I hope to persuade the Open
Data Commons people that the EULA-like parts of the ODbL (whereby it
tries to limit users by contract to give up rights that they might
otherwise have) may not be necessary - at least for OSM.  I know that
even on the ODC mailing lists this is not a universally liked feature
of the ODbL.

(I had also asked the lawyers to investigate whether this contract-law
part of the ODbL might not in fact weaken the enforceability of
share-alike, since breach of copyright is much easier to show and has
much stronger remedies (for our purpose) than breach of contract - so
you really do not want the courts to start interpreting your licence
as a contract.  Unfortunately they decided that because the OSM map
data was within the scope of copyright, the question of the ODbL's
enforceability was not important, so they did not answer it.)

I still feel that starting to use the ODbL does not automatically
imply stopping the use of CC licensing, and that it would be better to
offer both the old and new licences, as Wikipedia did with their
licence change.  As you know I discussed this with the LWG at a
meeting a few months ago (although not all members were present).
Since we now have a commitment from Creative Commons to release a new
version of CC-BY-SA next year, it would make sense to defer the
decision of whether to abandon CC altogether until then.

--
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>