[OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA

[Richard Fairhurst]

Tordanik wrote:
> The CC-BY-SA is popular, understandable and easy to implement for 
> users of our data. It does not build legal barriers that make using OSM 
> much harder than it strictly needs to be, which encourages people to 
> use OSM in creative, productive and unexpected ways. Continued 
> publication of the OSM database under CC-BY-SA will therefore 
> help us fulfil our project's mission, and can be implemented 
> without disruption of the ongoing licensing process.

Most of what you've said reads, to me, like an argument for licensing OSM
under a non-sharealike licence - either true public domain or
attribution-only.

"Easy to comply with"? Couldn't be easier. "Popular and trusted"? If it's
good enough for the US Government, it's good enough for me[1].

"Collective attribution"? Yes, an attribution-only licence can do that no
problem. "Future-proofness"? The trend in geodata is clearly converging
towards attribution-only; pretty much all the big Government releases have
been such. "Uncertainty and doubt"? You don't get much more clear-cut than a
concise licence/waiver such as the UK's Open Government Licence or ODC's
PDDL.

"Inadequate protection"? Of course, PD or attribution-only offers none of
this so-called "protection". But if you're saying you're happy to stick with
a licence whose provisions are generally believed to be of uncertain
applicability to data[2], it seems to me much more _honest_ to offer the
data on equal terms to all-comers, rather than the current situation where
good guys abide by the letter of the licence and bad guys don't. 

cheers
Richard

[1] should not be taken as an endorsement of military operations
[2] which I think is a fair summary of copyright-only licences such as the
CC ones: there's no doubt that copyright applies in some circumstances in
some jurisdictions and I've not seen anyone sane argue it couldn't; there's
also no doubt that there's an increasing amount of case law showing that
copyright certainly doesn't always protect collections of facts. 


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