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

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 11:20 PM, Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch> wrote:

> I hope we (as in the LWG) are not creating the impression that we are
> trying to assemble as many loop holes as possible, it is more
> identifying some of the edge cases and trying to document the community
> consensus on the interpretation. In the case at hand we are simply
> saying: here is a potential use case that is in a grey area, what do you
> think?
>

It is difficult to provide clarity and consistency/reliability without also
introducing "loopholes". Richard Fontana (co-author of GPL v3) has written
about this issue in the software copyleft context here:
https://lists.fedorahosted.org/pipermail/copyleft-next/2013-April/000639.html

Richard's email may be useful reading for folks thinking about how OSM
should approach this very difficult problem. Short version: balancing
between clarity and "loopholes" is a well-known problem for lawyers
(sometimes called the rules/standards problem), and there is no good answer
when trying to write general-purpose legal documents, like laws,
constitutions, or copyleft licenses :) I would suggest that OSM is better
off creating some clarity (and thereby encouraging more contributions) and
risking some loopholes, since the people interested in the loopholes are
likely to not contribute back anyway. But that is a judgment call and there
is no 100% right answer.

Luis

-- 
Luis Villa
Deputy General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
415.839.6885 ext. 6810

NOTICE: *This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
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