[OSM-legal-talk] What to do with the data of users who have not accepted the CT''s

[David Groom]

Since it has been decided to move to stage 4 of the licence implementation 
plan it seems an appropriate time to consider what to do with the 
contributions of users who have not agreed to the CT's ("the contributions")

The LWG last night confirmed [1] that "this should be a community question".

It now seems appropriate that "the community" should start discussing this.

So here's my initial thoughts.

A) Since there are, I am sure, many reasons why individuals may not have 
agreed to the CT's it seems inappropriate that all the contributions be 
treated in the same way.

B) I'm sure that there are many people like myself who are unable to agree 
to the CT's because a small proportion of their edits have been made from 
sources incompatible with the CT's.  It seems ridiculous that all that data 
should be lost.  Therefore I would propose:

1) an email is sent to all those who have not agreed to the CT's, asking 
them if they are willing to allow some of their data to be kept in the 
database, and if so to identify that data  (**).

2)  Once the data which has not been agreed to be relicensed is quantified, 
it is assumed that all other data is not suitable for relicencing under the 
terms of the CT (i.e. compatible with a future licence which is CC_BY-SA, 
ODbL, or any other "free and open" licence), it is "unagreeed data".

3) OSM produce details (maybe a Mapnik layer) showing the effect of removal 
of the "unagreeed data"

4) The community is then asked something along the lines of "given the 
demonstrated effect on the OSM database of the removal of data which cant be 
guaranteed to be compatible with possible future licences, should that data 
be removed, or should we in effect go back to the drawing board, and seek a 
better way".

Anyway, the above are my initial thoughts to try and get the community 
thinking about this.

Regards

David

[1]  https://docs.google.com/View?id=dd9g3qjp_120fdghcpj3

** This proposal is similar to the proposal I made in an email to the data 
working group on 6 February 2011  which was as follows



" At the moment it seems unlikely that I will be able to agree to the CT's 
for the dmgroom account, as I've based some edits on OS OpenData, and some 
on NearMap.  There are approx. 8,000 changesets attributed to this user 
account, the majority of which are based on sources which are CT 
compatible..

I'd obviously like to maximise the amount of my edits left in OSM.  I guess 
that the per-changeset licensing I queried last week won't happen, because 
there doesn't seem to be a great demand for it.

Currently, as it see it, there are four options available to me, but maybe 
you have others:

1) I'll do nothing, and let you sort things out;  - I cant then accept the 
CT's for user account dmgroom

or prior to 31 March:

2) I go through all my changesets , identify what edits I made based on 
sources which are not CT compatible, and then find those objects and delete 
them, or delete the properties relating to them which are not CT compatible. 
This will obviously will be very time-consuming and so I can't actually see 
myself being able to do it.

3) I go through all my changesets , identify the changesets which have 
non-CT compatible entries, and ask you to revert the changesets

4) I go through all my changesets , identify the changesets which have 
non-CT compatible entries, and try revert the changesets myself using the 
JOSM revert plugin

5) I go through all my changesets , identify the changesets which have 
non-CT compatible entries, and ask you move those changesets to another user 
account (I'm not sure if this is technically feasible)

I'm unclear which is the best way forward and would be grateful if you could 
advise me on the best course of action."