[Osmf-talk] my views on the ODbL

[Richard Fairhurst]

On 05/12/2009 21:31, Elizabeth Dodd wrote:
> The proposed licence is not a benefit to Australians in my view.

You have generously qualified this with "in my view" and I should point 
out that I disagree with all the force I can muster.

I spent about two hours this morning writing a pretty detailed e-mail, 
with all the case law citations you could want, explaining how the 
recent Australian High Court judgement followed Rural v Feist in the US, 
and therefore required the contract approach of ODbL rather than the 
copyright-only approach of CC-BY-SA.

I don't think you have at all answered the points in that, and therefore 
I stand by the viewpoint that in Australia, ODbL has the best chance of 
any open, non-clickwrap licence of protecting OSM's data. CC-BY-SA will 
not protect it at all.

The e-mail is here:
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2009-December/000479.html

I don't mind that your vote is lost; but I hope that others will look 
into the law and the references cited, rather than taking either yours, 
or my, interpretations on trust.

Apologies for the cross-post, but you have raised this same point on all 
three lists. For anyone good enough to read and reply, please do trim 
the follow-ups.

Richard