[OSM-legal-talk] Triggering ShareAlike in Government

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 06/18/2012 05:59 AM, Kate Chapman wrote:
> I have a question about what would trigger the ShareAlike in the
> context of government. Let's say for example a National Mapping Agency
> takes the OpenStreetMap road data for their area and then improves
> upon it. Those improvements are shared with the Ministry of the
> Environment. Is that redistribution?

First of all, any share-alike - with CC-By-SA as well as ODbL - only 
affects those who are in receipt of the derived work.

So if the NMA gives a derived work to the ME, then *even if* that is 
considered distribution, the rights arising from share-alike are only 
granted to the ME, and not to the general public.

(Same if you sell OSM derived databases, under old or new license - the 
customer gains share-alike rights but not a non-customer.)

The interesting question is, and I don't know if Paul intended to hint 
at that with his FOI reference: What happens if the information is 
leaked, e.g. if the ME has to reveal the derived data as a result of a 
FOI request - does the recipient (who made the FOI request) then gain 
share-alike rights also? I presume they do but I'm not sure. Other kinds 
of "leaks" are possible; among UK government officials it is customary 
to lose notebooks and hard disks on trains. The GPL FAQ 
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#TOCInternalDistribution) 
contains the question whether theft of previously un-relesed GPL 
software would trigger share-alike and the answer is no, because the 
sharing did not happen intentionally.

The GPL FAQ also says that company-internal use is not distribution, but 
providing copies to off-site contractors is; if that were true for OSM, 
then if you made a PDF and emailed that to a print shop to make 20 
copies for you that would already be distribution.

(What happens of the MoD takes an OSM map, draws a little bit on top of 
it and stamps it "secret" - is that allowed at all, given that the 
current license requires that they must not add any restrictions to the 
material...?)

Bye
Frederik

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