[Osmf-talk] Contributor Terms: is the right to fork granted?

Gervase Markham gerv at gerv.net
Mon Dec 7 14:56:44 UTC 2009


On 07/12/09 03:29, Niccolo Rigacci wrote:
> I think that I will refuse the new license if that imply that I'm 
> less free to fork the project (just in case of evilness).

[The point you make below is a good one, but it's not about forking.]

> I read the Contributor Terms from the Proposed License [1], where 
> "You grant the OSM Foundation a copyright and database rights 
> license for the bits of data that you add".
> 
> The draft of the Contributor Terms from the wiki [2] says 
> instead: "You hereby grant to OSMF and any party that receives 
> Your Contents a worldwide, royalty-free...".
> 
> I think that "and any party that receives Your Contents" makes a 
> big difference: in a case only OSMF has rights, in the other case 
> anybody who downloaded the planet. Am I right?

This bit of the Contributor Terms definitely seems wrong. On the face of
it, it grants unlimited rights to everyone. The license does not define
the word "receives" specially, and the Contents is your contribution, so
downloading planet.osm seems to be "receiving the Contents" to me.

Gerv




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