[OSM-legal-talk] importing ODBl data

[Stephan Knauss]

Mike Dupont writes: 

> On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 4:12 PM, Mike  Dupont
> <jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> that is different than to ask for the CT which is my eyes basically a
>> copyright assignment to the osmf, I cannot understand that or explain
> 
> And to add in one more point, I dont want to have to go back again and
> again to donors asking for more and more rights, we need to nail this
> down once and for all.

This is a good reason to have contributor terms.
It also protects users of the data from the possibility of lawsuits just 
because someone who agreed to donate data in the past changed mind. 

My opinion: If someone gives data to OSM then it must be without any 
special treatment. We agree to mention the contribution in the wiki, but no 
source tag. 

Some data was allowed to be imported if we name the source. So we ended up 
with a lot of source tags in the DB. What happens if someone removes these 
source tags? We violate the license of a data import. 

I believe we do not want to have that arguing later. Either someone accepts 
the OSM Terms and contributes or we don't want the contribution at all.
It creates a lot of hassle to have endless special contracts. 

So better have a clear contributor term also for imports. And no need to 
contact them again in one year, or in five. 

Stephan