[OSM-legal-talk] Guidelines on interpretation of section 4.6 od ODbL

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

David Groom wrote:
> A)  The term "offer"  as used in the first paragraph of section 4.6 "You 
> must also offer to recipients ".  I would have thought this means that 
> whenever you  publicly use a Derivative Database or a Produced Work from 
> a Derivative Database then you must instantly comply with the remainder 
> of section 4.6.  I may have misunderstood Frederick, but I infer from 
> his comment "....so in effect if someone ever asks you......" [2] that 
> he believes you only have to comply with the requirements of section 4.6 
> when asked.

Well you have to *comply* with the requirements always, not only when asked.

But the requirement is to "offer" something, and in general legal or 
commercial terms, an offer will only lead to a transaction if taken up 
by someone.

For example, you can "offer free headphones with every purchase of a 
music CD" but this does not mean that the headphones must be 
shrink-wrapped with the CD; the "offer" might indeed be something like 
"simply send us your address and a proof of purchase and we'll send you 
the headphones".

See also 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Closed_Issues under 
the first section ("What sort of access to Derivative Databases is 
required?") where our lawyers say:

"This offer can point to a publicly accessible dump, diff or explicit 
instructions for recreating the database, or it can be an (email) 
address at which the author can be contacted. If someone takes up the 
offer - makes a request for the database - you must provide it to them 
within a reasonable time from receiving the request ..."

> C)   In section 4.6(b) what does the "OR" relate to.  It could mean
> 
> (i) "A file containing all of the alterations made to the Database" OR " 
> the method of making the alterations to the Database (such as an 
> algorithm)...."; ie a file or the method
> (ii) A file containing "all of the alterations made to the Database" OR 
> "the method of making the alterations to the Database (such as an 
> algorithm)..." ie a file which contains all the alterations OR a file 
> which contains the method.

I don't think it matters but I dont't think it makes sense to require 
that the method be described "in a file".

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"