[OSM-legal-talk] Proposed "Metadata"-Guideline

[Steve Coast]

I designed a license concept that’s relevant as an alternative way of thinking about this:

	http://stevecoast.com/2015/09/30/license-ascent/

On a different note: It’s a false dichotomy to compare OSM and Public Domain, it’s really about comparing buying a proprietary map (which the OP didn’t mention that I saw) and OSM. If you want all these rights, you can just pick up the phone and pay HERE or TomTom for them, they’d love to hear from you. From that standpoint OSM looks wonderful of course.

Best

Steve

> On Oct 9, 2015, at 12:56 PM, Eugene Alvin Villar <seav80 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 11:49 PM, Mr. Stace D Maples <stacemaples at stanford.edu <mailto:stacemaples at stanford.edu>> wrote:
> One other question, and I’m just curious, not trying to start a flame war. Isn’t some of the data in OSM from public domain datasets? If so, what is the OSM rationale for placing a more restrictive licensing model on that data?
> 
> Well, this issue is actually a "religious" war most commonly known as the BSD vs. GPL debate.
> 
> Personally, I take issue with your statement that ODbL is a "more restrictive" license than public domain. It all depends on your definition of "restrictive" vis-a-vis "freedom". Public domain or CC-BY-style licensing (aka BSD style) does provide the immediate user with a lot more rights than a share-alike license like ODbL or CC-BY-SA (aka GPL style). However, those rights are only guaranteed for the immediate user. The immediate user can add his own improvements to it and then make those improvements proprietary—a usage right that's allowed. Unfortunately, other users cannot make use of those improvements.
> 
> On the other hand, a share-alike license aims to be a more sustainable model. It restricts the immediate user on only one aspect: the right to make a share-alike content/data/IP proprietary is explicitly disallowed. This ensures that any improvements are shared back to the community, unlike with the BSD-style licensing.
> 
> For me, share-alike licensing for OSM data is a net positive. This licensing ensures that nobody can take the data, improve it to make it even more valuable and then make it proprietary.
> 
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