[OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment

[Frederik Ramm]

Dermot,

Dermot McNally wrote:
>> I am willing to grant the OSFM + 2/3 of the community the right to relicense
>> my contributions in the following ways:
>> * the current versions of the ODbL and/or of the CC-BY-SA,
>> * all past and future versions of the ODbL and/or of the CC-BY-SA,
>> * all licenses that follow the Share-Alike/Copyleft principle, and
> 
> That's not a bad start - but if I play spot-the-missing-bit, it looks
> to me that you aren't prepared to trust 2/3 of the community to decide
> that (for reasons not yet forseen) a licence other than the two you
> list and which may not be copyleft/sharealike.

That is not the only problem. It is virtually impossible to define 
"license that follows the share-alike/copyleft principle". You don't 
have to look further than ODbL with its exemption of produced works - 
assume that for the current license change, someone had told us 50 years 
ago "if you choose a share-alike/copyleft license then it's ok". Now 
ODbL is widely said to be "share-alike for databases" but there are 
people who object to ODbL on the grounds that it does not have 
share-alike for produced works - that it is not a "real" share-alike 
license.

Even CC-BY-SA does have exemptions (e.g. something that is covered by a 
patent may not fall under CC-BY-SA's share-alike). Who's to say what counts?

Bye
Frederik

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