[OSM-legal-talk] Please, consider that more people want to mark even their future ODBl OSM contributions as CC-BY-SA compatible

[Mike Dupont]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 7:14 AM, Paul Norman <penorman at mac.com> wrote:
> If someone is unable to sign the CTs because they don't hold copyright over
> their contributions then they'd be unable to legally contribute to OSM or
> any open mapping project regardless of the CTs.
>
> If someone is not working in a GIS field I can't see the courts considering
> that mapping they did on their own time as being the property of their
> employer. If they worked in a GIS field then it could get complicated, but
> none of this depends on the CTs.

After working and living in Germany for many many years, and now
moving back to the US and have been forced to deal with this issue.

it seems that US corporations overreach on this issue and in some
cases claim all copyright from employees. It is not just want you do
at work or what is related to work but also to what you do in your
free time.

Of course I would love to have some comfort here and hope that I am
overreacting, but if you see some of the links that I posted there are
scary NDAS that you are forced to sign it you want to work or contract
for some companies.

So the CTs and a copyright assignment would basically have to be
co-signed by some peoples employers, like the fsf requires for
contributors as rob meyers mentions in the next post. I wonder for
example, what people who work for bing or google maps have signed and
how that might affect their contributions.

thanks,
mike


-- 
James Michael DuPont
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