[OSM-legal-talk] Licenses for Produced Works under ODbL

Jonathan Harley jon at spiffymap.net
Wed Oct 31 10:50:24 GMT 2012


On 30/10/12 13:47, Michael Collinson wrote:
> On 30/10/2012 13:07, Jonathan Harley wrote:
>>
> [snip]
>>
>> One thing that's confusing me, is that 
>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright does not say what license 
>> applies to the contents. ODbL specifically says that it only applies 
>> to the database and a separate license is required for the contents. 
>> It suggests that a notice should be inserted "prominently in all 
>> relevant locations" which surely includes the copyright wiki page.
>>
>> I remember earlier discussions on this list about using ODcL for the 
>> contents. Was this what was agreed on? LWG, anyone?
>
> Hi Jonathan,
>
> The short answer is the the contributor terms control content and that 
> the relevant wording there is heavily modelled on ODcL. As a low 
> priority TODO, I'll trace back the exact mechanism to see if we can be 
> more obvious about the relationships on the copyright page without 
> using tortuous language. It has been a while.

I really think it does need to be more obvious. The copyright page is 
the obvious place for prospective consumers of OSM data to find out what 
they can do with it. It doesn't currently mention the CTs, nor would a 
consumer who is not an OSM contributor think of looking at the CTs. ODbL 
itself recommends that we give a clear statement about what license 
applies to the database contents, and we're not doing that.

Also, thanks for your clarification yesterday about copyright.

It strikes me that the Community Guidelines pages are not structured in 
a way that's very easy for a prospective data consumer to use, and that 
what we need is something more goal-oriented; perhaps broken down by 
use-cases, "if you want to do this... your legal requirements are this".

1) does something like that exist and I've missed it?
2) if no, has the LWG considered doing something like that?
3) if no, should I have a stab at a draft for OSM-legal-talk to comment on?

J.


-- 
Dr Jonathan Harley   :    Managing Director    :   SpiffyMap Ltd

md at spiffymap.com      Phone: 0845 313 8457     www.spiffymap.com
The Venture Centre, Sir William Lyons Road, Coventry CV4 7EZ, UK




More information about the legal-talk mailing list