[OSM-legal-talk] Attribution

[Richard Weait]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Luis Villa <lvilla at wikimedia.org> wrote:

[ ... ]
> But it is a reality that [ fear of a Share Alike obligation(?)]* slows,
> or in some cases stops, adoption of/contribution to OSM.

Slows contribution to OpenStreetMap?  That sounds incorrect to me.
ODbL and particularly Share Alike _encourage_ contribution to
OpenStreetMap.

One very simple way to be sure you are Sharing Alike is to make your
improvements to the OpenStreetMap data first, then consume and reuse
the data.  That's probably the ideal consumer of OpenStreetMap data;
the consumer who shares their improvements first then consumes the
data unchanged.  And it is a rock solid, dead simple way to meet your
Share Alike obligations.

Does avoidance of Share Alike obligations reduce adoption of
OpenStreetMap data?  Perhaps it does reduce adoption by those who have
decided to not improve the OpenStreetMap data by sharing their
potential improvements.  Those who could improve OpenStreetMap data
but who chose not to do so are excluding themselves from participating
fully in the OpenStreetMap community.

That is their choice.

We as OpenStreetMap contributors see "improving the data" as a core value.

* I hope that I have parsed your intent correctly, Luis.  The
paragraph I trimmed also discussed copyright case law and lack of case
law for "substantial" in this context.