[OSM-legal-talk] Attribution

[Rob Myers]

On 30/04/14 02:35 PM, Tobias Knerr wrote:
> 
> I think there is quite a bit of data that will, with high likelihood,
> never be of use to anyone. That's especially true for byproducts of the
> creation of a "produced work".

It's been of use to at least one person. The person who created the
produced work.

But if the license can encourage more cost effective and environmentally
friendly computation that's an unexpected benefit. ;-)

> But your argument about also shows that there are mappers who ask for a
> lot more than just "giving data back when you fix things".

It shows that the intent of the license is for *all* users of the data
to be free to use it however they encounter it.

If that requires more than bug fixes then so be it. The license doesn't
exist to protect corporations from having to pay for proprietary data
(or to drum up contributions for OSM), it exists to protect the freedom
of every user of the data.

> Thus it would
> be foolish for a data consumer to assume they only have to follow that
> spirit, as much as I wish that was enough.

If the data isn't used to produce the work, it doesn't have to be provided.

Trying to work around this isn't foolish, it's malicious.

Where there is legitimate uncertainty it should be cleared up if
possible. But always to favour *all* users of the data.

- Rob.