[OSM-legal-talk] Attribution

Thu May 1 08:18:30 UTC 2014

There are 2 solutions for this Steve dilemma:

1.      not ask for these "little, tiny things" and create a real free
map...

2.      hire an expensive lawyer and pursue the criminals

Common wake up, this 2014, and if you have gold (the map) in your hands,
don't expect to be treated like a volunteer. 

And if you do not have the money to defend yourselves, then just
surrender.

I won't even criticize this ridiculous naming and shaming proposition,
it's for children only.

Gert

Van: Steve Coast [mailto:steve at asklater.com] 
Verzonden: Monday, April 28, 2014 8:43 PM
Aan: Licensing and other legal discussions.
Onderwerp: [OSM-legal-talk] Attribution

http://stevecoast.com/2014/04/28/attribution-is-it-time-to-name-and-sham
e/

--

OpenStreetMap <http://osm.org/>  is the global, open and free map
dataset that anyone can use. It is created by a huge community of
volunteers who pour their time and energy in to the project. It's also
fun, beautiful and cool.

So it's sad that people don't want to respect the license. It asks two
very simple things:

1.	Please say you're using OSM. This is very simple
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright> .
2.	If you change the map, please give the changes back. This is
called "share-alike".

Compared to paying a lot of money for incredibly license-restricted
data, you'd think people would be ok with these requirements.

Sadly, this isn't the case.

There are those who are now willfully disregarding our tiny little
requirements. It's being framed as some gigantic and unreasonable
proposition, asking to say where the data came from or giving data back
when you fix things. As if it's completely bananas to ask such a thing.
As if Linux or Wikipedia should be disaster ghost towns while asking for
exactly the same thing of their users.

This is just baloney. The real comparison should be; if you don't like
the license you're free to use expensive and complicatedly-license data.
That's your option. Those guys are just a phone call away, and will be
happy to sell you data. You'd probably find that they have very strong
attribution requirements, just like OSM does.

It is the ultimate disrespect to the volunteers who built the data to
not even attribute their contributions. It's even worse that there are
some who're trying to also own OSM for themselves by taking away the
share-alike requirement.

Is the license perfect? I'm afraid not. Specifically we need more
clarification around the technical implementation and use of geocodes,
especially in relation to other datasets. It's hard today to technically
comply with some of those edge cases.

But that's not what we're talking about. We're speaking here about the
simple ask, that if you use OSM you please say clearly on the map that
it is OSM. You're getting a great dataset, for free, under an open
license, that millions of people are contributing to. We're not asking
for $100,000 license fees, we're just asking that you say who we are.

It's the ultimate human need; I was here. I did this.

How could you deny people that?

Apparently, easily and willfully. People within the OSM community have
been frustrated and trying to fix it for some time. If we were a
proprietary map supplier we'd revoke a license or jump to legal options.

We are much nicer than that. I propose a four stage plan, organized on
OSM's legal mailing list
<https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk>  and tracked on
the wiki:

1.	A polite email, linking to our requirements
2.	A week later: Another polite email, warning of what's to come.
3.	A week later: Another polite email, same as above
4.	A week later: Very public naming and shaming on OSMs various
social media channels and blogs

Most people who miss our requirements are making a simple error. This is
a process that gives three opportunities and an entire month to correct
the mistake. This is not a brand new idea or process. The FSF and others
have named & shamed (and have even went further
<http://news.slashdot.org/story/08/12/11/1745254/fsf-files-suit-against-
cisco-for-gpl-violations> ) for GPL violations in the past.

In a narrow way, this all a good thing. It shows the growth and maturity
of the project, that there are those out there that want to own it or
take all the advantages without even saying where the data came from.
But in the end, we have to defend ourselves for what little, tiny things
we ask.

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