[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] offering adapted databases

[Steve Coast]

shifting to legal

On 7/8/2011 3:50 PM, Anthony wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 6:14 PM, Steve Coast<steve at asklater.com>  wrote:
>> Lets say you make a map and someone wants the data.
>>
>> First, are you acting in the spirit of the license? Let's assume yes. That
>> gets you 99% of the way there, despite your technical detail analysis.
> I'm not really sure what the spirit of the license is, so I don't
> think it's safe to assume I am acting within the spirit of the
> license.
>
> Is CloudMade acting within the spirit of the license when they display
> maps containing proprietary data which can be bought for only
> $295/year?  I don't see how they are, but apparently you think they
> are, right?

I have no idea, I don't work there.

>> Next, you don't have to make the database available. You can make the db
>> available, or the code.
> What code?  I generally don't write all the code and then run the
> code.  I add a few things here, run a little bit of SQL there, find
> some mistakes and run some more SQL, build some indexes, transfer some
> files to EC2, run some scripts on EC2 which are too memory intensive
> for my home machine, transfer some files back, etc.
>
> Making "the code" available doesn't work.

Well that's what the license says, there's community norms around this stuff

     
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Trivial_Transformations_-_Guideline

It feels like you're just looking for a reason to say no. It's extremely 
simple: It's there because of the concern you have. Just publish or 
point to the code. Declaring it 'doesnt work' isn't helping or true.

No license is going to be 100% perfect. Do you understand that?

We would all have a lot more time for you, I think, if your attitude was 
"ok the license is basically done, we've spent years on it, lets get it 
done and move on to version 2" rather than "I'm going to hold out with 
increasingly outlandish scenarios until they delete my data".

Personally I think your questions about how much time to keep the db 
for, for example, are reasonable. The problem is I could sit here for 10 
minutes and come up with 10 reasonable looking questions like that about 
any license and we would never get anywhere. So, my preference is we 
just finish this phase and then work on implementing a bunch of fixes. 
But this "stasis of concerns" in perpetuity isn't going to work.

If the LWG declared they would look at all those kinds of problems in a 
'version 2' would you join us?

>
> Adding a question, because your point about storage brings up a
> potential semi-solution:  What if I just store every database I ever
> use on a hard drive, and if someone asks for a copy I send them, for
> the cost of a hard drive plus shipping, everything?

I believe the GPL has an 'at cost' clause somewhere, and personally I 
think that's reasonable.

Steve