[OSM-legal-talk] CTs and the 1 April deadline

[John Smith]

On 8 January 2011 01:21, Mike Collinson <mike at ayeltd.biz> wrote:
> I naturally would prefer the term "flexibility" rather than "indecisiveness" :-) and that it is a highly strategic feature not a bug.

I don't see it as flexibility, I see it as "indecisiveness", I can
only imagine how disorganised and a mess linux kernel development
would be without a clear outlook on licensing, linux is clearly GPL
and BSD is clearly BSD licensed, it's not going to chop and change at
the whim of a small vocal group.

> I hope you will stay contributing and be a party to future collective decisions whether or not we personally agree.  OSM is a very, very long life project about free and open geodata. Share-alike and PD are tools just as Ruby-on-Rails is. Flexibility on those tools is important for three reasons.

I can't and won't continue to contribute to OSM-F after the CT becomes
mandatory. Just as Frederik made it clear he wouldn't continue with
OSM-F if PD wasn't possible in future. This is a moral issue for me
and I can't give OSM-F a blank cheque just as Nearmap won't.

> - The first is short-term, internal to OSM and political.  There are broadly two main groups of contributors, share-alike and PD proponents.  Each side claims to be in the majority so the reality is that both sides are roughly even and neither can claim moral ascendency. My goal is consensus between those two groups: we stay share-alike, we pioneer a coherent share-alike license for highly factual data and we explore how it can work in the real world. If it works well, the 2/3 majority required to make a change effectively locks in share-alike.  Otherwise, the PD proponents who reluctantly go along can try and persuade us why a PD-like license can best serve the open data movement, and they have a rational, democratic mechanism to do so.  If enthusiastic supporters of either side are unhappy, then I have done my job well :-)

This should be of great concern, if you think those expressing
opinions now against the CT is bad, imagine the fireworks over such a
moral and personal issue. This is bordering on a religious debate and
well people have been blowing up churches lately because of
differences of religious opinions. In fact the only non-religious
based conflict at present is North Korea.

> - OpenStreetMap is THE pioneer in creating and licensing open highly granular, high factual data. It took over 10 years for the choices for licensing open software to become obvious and reasonably mature. We are only 6 years in and still discussing our opening move.

I see the ODBL as a step backwards, the license is so complex and so
misunderstood even by those promoting it that how is everyone else
going to cope, at least with a simple copyright license expectations
and so forth are well understood, and while you seem to be implying
map data is a simple database of factual information, this is a bone
of contention as others have pointed out that maps can be
copyrightable regardless of the format they may reside in, and maps
were the first thing copyrightable. At present the only issue seems to
be that CC-by-SA lacks a database clause.

> -The flexibility is ultimately for the long, long term.  A very large percentage of what we map now will still be valid in 120 years time, just as I can still navigate using a local 1891 OS map. We are on the extreme end as to the potential life of our project. Software, even operating systems, come and go and get re-written with fresh perspectives.  If, as happens, they die because the licensing regimen did not anticipate the future, it is not such a big deal. For us, it is.  Share-alike is a tool to progressing the goal of Open IP, not an end in itself. May be it will have outlived its utility in 10, 50 or 100 years, may be it won't.

I keep getting told that the "flexability" is in the best interests of
the project, if this were true was is it more common for commercial
entities to require this, where as most other things like the linux
kernel has clearly defined principals that the project is based on.
This will only end in tears.