[OSM-legal-talk] License question, user clicking on map

[Olov McKie]

Hello All!

Again thank you for all your feedback. Unfortunately after the feedback that I have gotten so far on my initial 4 use-cases, and the 4 extra sub-use-cases I added later, I still do not know for sure if the use-cases I presented would trigger the ODbL share alike clause or not. My confusion about this has though forced me, over the last weeks, to dig a lot deeper into the licenses and rules surrounding our map than I have ever done before as a contributor and a casual user. It is obvious that there still is a lot of discussion going on on how to interpret the license and what cases of copying and use, should trigger the share alike and attribute clauses, and what should not.

I would like to argue that a lot of these questions are no longer open for debate. The set of rules that the redaction bot followed, to enable the license change, is by the bots work now coded into the history of our database in such a way that changing them would force us to revert the entire license change. I would suspect (I am no lawyer) that if a license dispute about OSM ever end up in court, we will not be able to argue for more copyright protection than what we gave to those contributors who did not want the license to change. I would also like to argue that, when a question comes in if a user can or can not do something without breaching our copyright, we should always start the discussion by looking for similar examples in our own change to the ODbL.   

I have searched for these rules, but I have not found them, at least not in the form of a list that clearly states, "This is the final list of rules that the reduction bot is based upon", preferably with references to relevant sections of the bots source code. 
Where can I find the final version of the source code for the redaction bot that was run to do the license change? 
Help in finding these would be appreciated.
I know about these:
What is clean (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/What_is_clean%3F), are these the rules the bot is based on? 
Some code, but it states that it is only an example ( https://github.com/zerebubuth/openstreetmap-license-change )


As I said in an earlier posting: As far as I understand our license change, it can be described as this: (Please correct me if I am wrong) 
All objects that had an edit history where someone not willing to change the license (decliner) had edited anything was reverted back in history until no edits by any decliner where left, thereby creating a clean database. All cleaning operations where based on data history in the database. 


This could also be described as:
A user has the full copyright to any point they add to the map that they add regardless of surrounding data.




Left out examples of multiple users, 


The page "What is clean" talks about "The Safe Approach", 


This is what I think I know so far, based on what I have read over the last weeks so I can not give links for reference, and if I am wrong, please correct me: 

The only copyright taken into account by the redaction bot is what is stored in the history of the database for a point. 


Redaction bot


All cleaning operations where based on data history in the database. 

I am currently spending a lot of time thinking about the license and what can be considered copying, derived works etc. I just realized that there is one recent event that sets an unprecedented precedence in how to look upon these questions, it is of course our own recent license change to ODbL.

sourcecode, get rules


direct linear history of the database edits

As I understand our license change, it can be described as this: (Please correct me if I am wrong) All objects that had an edit history where someone not willing to change the license (decliner) had edited anything was reverted back in history until no edits by any decliner where left, thereby creating a clean database. All cleaning operations where based on data history in the database.