[OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Richard Fairhurst
richard at systemed.net
Mon Jul 25 15:29:42 BST 2011
Tordanik wrote:
> I see that the ODbL fits your particular use case nicely. But as
> you acknowledge, things look different for people with other
> use cases. I expect that I'm one of those people whose favourite
> use cases won't benefit from ODbL - quite the opposite, in fact.
I can certainly see your issues. But I think that this is what Steve was
talking about in the SOTM-EU keynote when he said "let's move to ODbL and
sort out the details in v2".
None of what you've highlighted is insuperable. They either require, IMHO
(and I'm certainly not an authority on these things), a small wording change
in ODbL 1.1, or a well-formed "community guideline" on our part. I suspect,
for example, that looking closely at "machine-readable" in ODbL 4.6 would
get us a long way. But fixing ODbL to remove implementation bugs will be a
lot easier than making CC-BY-SA appropriate for data.
> I hope that you could still be convinced to accept a dual licensing
> solution that makes the database available under both ODbL and
> CC-BY-SA?
Oddly enough I've just answered this one in private mail to someone so I'll
repost my message here. :)
My well-documented personal preference is for public domain (or
attribution-only).
So if you have two licences with differing share-alike permissions, and you
dual-license the data under them, then you're providing it with more
freedoms than you would under one alone. That's more permissive than either
licence, and therefore closer to public domain - so _personally_ I'm happy.
(I've said this on the lists at some point though I can't instantly find
where.)
But never mind what I think, is it right for the project? It's always hard
to put yourself in someone else's mindset. But if you believe that
share-alike is good, then surely you want that share-alike to be enforceable
(otherwise you'd support CC0+community norms, a la Science Commons). With
CC-BY-SA it's entirely possible that in many jurisdictions it isn't
enforceable for all data - and, particularly, for OSM's most commercially
valuable asset (routable street networks and addressing) in jurisdictions
such as the States.
So I wouldn't advocate "CC-BY-SA or ODbL" for the project; I think ODbL is a
better way of providing share-alike. But personally, I'd not be upset if we
ended up with dual-licensing, because it's slightly closer to public domain.
cheers
Richard
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