[OSM-legal-talk] Creative-Commons 4.0 (first draft)

Paul Norman penorman at mac.com
Sat Apr 7 18:50:49 BST 2012


> From: Rob Myers [mailto:rob at robmyers.org]
> Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2012 10:08 AM
> To: legal-talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Creative-Commons 4.0 (first draft)
> 
> On 04/04/2012 01:33 PM, Ed Avis wrote:
> > I guess the number 1 requirement for CC4, from an OSM point of view,
> > is that it be interoperable with the ODbL.
> 
> I recommend that people define "compatible" and "interoperable"
> thoroughly when discussing them, as they can mean different things in
> different contexts. GNU GPL compatibility, for example, basically means
> derivatives of the work can be covered by the GPL.
> 
> Having read the current 4.0 draft (and IANAL), I think SA 4's proposed
> database right copyleft clashes with the ODbL's:
> 
> http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0_Drafts
> http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/c/cc/4point0_draft_1.txt
> 
> "Section 2 - License.
> 
> (a)  Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Public License,
> Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive
> license to:
> [...]
> (3)	where the Licensed Work is a database, in addition to the above,
> extract and reuse contents of the Licensed Work,
> 
> [...]
> 
> Section 3 - License Conditions.  The rights granted in Section 2(a) of
> this Public License are expressly made subject to and limited by the
> following conditions:
> [...]
> (c) ShareAlike.  If you Share an Adaptation,
> 
> (1) You must release it under the terms of one of the following:
> 
> (i) this Public License,
> [...]"
> 
> I will raise this on odc-discuss.

It looks like with the release of CC 4.0 there may be two share-alike
licenses suitable for data with different copyleft provisions. CC with a
stronger copyleft and ODbL with a weaker one that allows produced works
under a non-free license. This may be justified - after all, there is the
case of the GPL and LGPL where each license has their place. If this
happens, it would be nice if the next version of the ODbL allowed for
ODbL-licensed databases to also be distributed under CC by-sa, like the LGPL
allows you to modify and distribute the modified version under the GPL




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