[OSM-legal-talk] The edges of share-alike on data Re: Attribution

[Michael Collinson]

I've renamed the subject because it has gone way off topic, but I wanted 
to come back on Tobias' comment because it struck a chord and I would 
like to share a personal research topic. I am curious to evolve the idea 
further to see if there is any positive value.

Open data is a different animal to software source code and 
highly-creative works and I suspect it will a few more years yet until 
we understand it all fully.

I personally see this "unwanted data"  is an underlying theme under many 
of the issues the LWG has been looking at under the Community Guidelines 
process :-

Geocoding: So I have to share a patient's medical record because it is 
geocoded against OSM?

Dynamic Data: So if I use OpenStreetMap car park location data, I have 
to share the real-time occupancy data?

Algorithmic transformations: So I thought of this clever idea to 
pre-format OSM data for fast loading into my game. Now I have to share 
my that or my algorithm?

General maps: I want to use OSM to show locations of restaurants on my 
restaurant review site. Now I have to share the reviews?

And so on.   Now many of these issues may be resolved, and in some case 
have been resolved, in other ways which remain within the scope of the 
current ODbL version. But a very simple way of dealing with everything 
in one go is to say:

*The OpenStreetMap project collects long-lived geospatial data as a set 
of intelligently or machine-made physical observations only.* [Wording 
needs improving!]

And then to say:

*And share-alike only applies to what we collect.*

Again, it just a research topic. I see it as benefiting the 
OpenStreetMap project enormously but at the same time potentially 
debasing the whole concept of share-alike for the wider open data 
community ... perhaps those restaurant reviews should be shared?

Mike



On 30/04/2014 23:35, Tobias Knerr wrote:
> On 30.04.2014 19:37, Rob Myers wrote:
>> On 30/04/14 03:18 AM, Tobias Knerr wrote:
>>> But we have to judge a license based on its actual effects, not the
>>> original intention. What annoys me, for example, is when we require
>>> people to publish data that we wouldn't even want if they offered it.
>> The users of the data may want it. The license exists to benefit them,
>> not (just) OSM.
>>
>> If the actual effects worked against this then yes there would be a problem.
> 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".
>
> 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". 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.
>
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