[OSM-legal-talk] [talk-au] Statement from nearmap.com regarding submission of derived works from PhotoMaps to OpenStreetMap

[Steve Bennett]

Hang on, here's Nearmap's statement: "All such additions or edits
submitted to OSM prior to 17 June 2011 may be held and continue to be
used by OSM under the terms in place between OSM and the individual
which submitted the addition or edit at the relevant time."

And here's Nick's interpretation: "Nearmap wish all contributions to
OSM, by any mapper who has agreed to the CT, derived from their
imagery (before the 17th June 2011) to be able to be relicenced by
OSMF under any licence it (OSMF) chooses at any time."

They're completely opposite. It's not "just looking for problems". If
Nearmap had wanted those contributions to be relicensable under some
future licence, they would have said so. They said the opposite:
"under the terms in place...at the relevant time". *Not* "under any
licence [the OSMF] chooses at any time". If lawyers drafted the
statement, they meant what they said.

At best, I'm interpreting it as "existing contributions are licensed
under CC-BY-SA and/or ODbL, and that's ok. If you want to change the
licence again in the future, we'll talk." I mean, Nearmap have never
said they have a problem with ODbL, nor do they have a problem with
future relicensing *per se*. They have a problem with allowing
unspecified future licensing without power of veto.

So...I'm looking at this as a sort of stay of execution. The data can
stay in OSM until the licence changes again, which could be a few
years, it could be a long time. Who knows what will happen then, or
what it will mean if Nearmap is no longer around for some reason.
Remember we're talking about a terms of use issue, not a licensing
issue.

Steve


On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 12:01 AM, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
> So those guys put out a legal statement and an employee even gave you his
> interpretation on this list, which you can cite in court if you want. I
> think you're pretty solid and it feels like people are just looking for
> problems no matter what is done or said. :-(
>
> Steve
> stevecoast.com
> On Jun 16, 2011, at 0:44, Nick Hocking <nick.hocking at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My understanding is that Nearmap wish all contributions to OSM, by any
> mapper who has agreed to the CT, derived from their imagery (before the 17th
> June 2011) to be able to be relicenced by OSMF under any licence it (OSMF)
> chooses at any time.
>
> However I also can't see exactly how the published statement meets this
> wish.
>
> Nick
>
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