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

[Alexander Zatko]

Could you please expand on this (and on the last paragraph in your response)?

The licence and its provisions, including the attribution requirement exist to further that mission, not as a purpose in itself.

How does the attribution requirement further the mission if it is violated?

Anticipating your answer along the lines that the violations are too rare to bother with, what is the magic number where they stop being insignifficant? Please note that the 10% of the violating web sites I (gu)estimated in my limited research do not tell the whole story. We have today cases of companies <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lacking_proper_attribution> with widely used products that do not follow the attribution requirement.


Alexander


> On 29 May 2024, at 10:36, Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch> wrote:
> 
> 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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