[Osmf-talk] New license change proposal status

[Mike Collinson]

Let me answer as much as I can:

At 12:58 PM 2/12/2009, Peter Miller wrote:

>I see a number of issues.
>
>- The 'Multiple Jurisdiction Clause' still appears to be outstanding  
>(ITO's lawyer and the OSMF lawyer both seemed to think that this is an  
>issue). [1]

= Choice of law?  See proposal document Difficulties? section.

The LWG propose that this is an issue where various legal opinion differs, that it is not a show stopper and can be re-addressed in future ODbL licenses.


>- Is the Reverse Engineering Clause still unresolved? If not then  
>please update this page. If it is not resolved then what is happening  
>about it.  [3]

Also see proposal document Difficulties? section. Removed from 1.0

I've updated the page as requested.


>- The Produced Work guidelines seem very thin.[4] I only mention this  
>because this seems to be one of the key difficulties with the license  
>that assumes that a Produced Work and a Derived Database are different  
>and actually there is a lot of overlap. I have added a comment on the  
>talk page about KML.

The LWG believes that a short and sweet principle has been established and that evolution of the page, and indeed all guidelines current and yet to be formulated, with examples will be very helpful but something that can happen over time with input from all.


>-Validating the license. Some time ago I proposed that we validation  
>some of the key Use Cases with some target users to see if they would  
>be happy. Has this happened? ie have we checked with a TV station and  
>a newpaper etc etc?

Not that I am aware of.


>- Articles of Association - given that contributors are being asked to  
>give all their contributions to the OSMF and given that the OSMF can  
>change the terms [1] then the Articles of Association for the  
>foundation seem to be important. They are generally recognised to be  
>too weak at present and a working group to review the Articles was  
>proposed in May09 . [2] I expressed interest in the working group at  
>the time but have not heard anything more about it and there is no  
>information about a work group on the foundation website.

Nascent. 

 From the narrow perspective of the license, the LWG believes that the Contributor Terms wording of clause 3 is a far more powerful block on the OSMF doing wicked things with OpenStreetMap data than an Articles change.  Whatever Articles say, they can still be changed again by a packed membership/board.

http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms

Here is some text that is not put on the wiki yet:
--------------------
Articles Working Group 

o Review the OSMF Articles of Association (effectively the OSMF consititution) and come up with issues that need to be addressed. 

Members:
o Andy Robinson (OSMF Board) 
o Additional members are solicited from OSMF membership

o You can get in touch with the whole team at: articles at osmfoundation.org 
-----------------------




>- There is then the issue about whether the board should allow  
>contributors to tick a 'my contributions are PD anyway'. Personally I  
>think that there should be such an option. I now support PD now  
>because of the inherent difficulties I now see with share-alike  
>licenses for data (as outlined by Creative Commons on the OSM wiki  
>[5]). For the avoidance of doubt I would support the adoption of the  
>ODbL license at this point for pragmatic reasons but urge the board  
>the include a PD option.

Discussed/will discuss elsewhere.


>[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Open_Issues
>[2] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2009-May/000013.html
>[3] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Use_Cases
>[4] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Produced_Work_-_Guideline
>[5] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ODbL_comments_from_Creative_Commons
>
>
>Regards,
>Peter

Mike