[OSM-legal-talk] The license attribution - proposal

[Simon Poole]

Things to note:

- any such scheme would have to be compliant with section 9.0 of the 
ODbL, in particular it could only apply to unlicensed use after the 30 
day term available to the licensor to cure the violation. In practical 
terms (with the exception of some very specific jurisdictions) such a 
scheme is likely to be financially net negative because you would end up 
in court most of the time.

- more importantly the OSMF exists ".. to support the OSM project, run 
and protect the OSM database, and make it available to all as Free and 
Open data." The licence and its provisions, including the attribution 
requirement exist to further that mission, not as a purpose in itself. 
Any enforcement of the licence terms must take in to account if it 
actually supports the mission of the whole, or put differently: OSM 
doesn't have the mission to be a patent and copyright troll. A policy as 
you suggest would likely diminish the use of OSM and scare away many 
organisations.

All that said, your numbers show the exact opposite of what you claim. 
In general attribution seems to be provided at a better level that what 
could be expected and enforcement seems to work quite well.

Simon


Am 22.05.2024 um 10:04 schrieb Alexander Zatko:
> Recently, I have submitted a proposal 
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KRQDVI3IpEvaVGW_pJhf_Ha7VzdOItGGxtITpTvsJjI/edit> to 
> the LWG, of a new mechanism for enforcing the license-stipulated 
> attribution requirement (AR). To date I have received no feedback from 
> them, which is why I am asking for opinions about the proposal on this 
> forum.
>
> In short, the proposed mechanism calls for requiring the AR violators 
> to cover the time and material expenses, incurred by whoever takes the 
> initiative to bring the violator into compliance. The required 
> compensation can have the form of volunteer work or money, which would 
> be used to reward the people working on rectifying the violations.
>
> As I see it, the attribution requirement was placed into the license 
> for a reason, and the OSMF should *enforce* its compliance*. The 
> volunteer-based mechanism we have in place today is insufficient, as 
> it does not lead to active discovery of violations, nor generally 
> leads to resolutions of the known ones in a timely manner, or at all. 
> I belive my proposal is fair and at the same time provides incentives 
> for people to work on the cases. I do not claim to have considered all 
> aspects that might affect the proposal implementability or 
> desirability, which is why I am looking forward to your comments.
>
>
> Alexander
>
>
> *  AFAIK, only OSMF can legally do so
>
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