[Osmf-talk] my views on the ODbL

[Kai Krueger]

Hi,

On 07/12/2009 09:09, James Livingston wrote:
> On 07/12/2009, at 9:57 AM, Simon Ward wrote:
>> If Openstreetmap’s
>> evolution involves a licence change that most believe to be for the
>> better, why should your data, agreed to be imported with rigid licensing
>> conditions, win?
>
> The data often doesn't have rigid licensing conditions, in the Australia cases it's CC-BY (not even with -SA), as the only condition is attribution "public domain" (or CC0 etc.) are probably the only less rigid options. The problem isn't that it's incompatible with OpenStreetMap's potential licensing choice (as I believe you would satisfy all the conditions of CC-BY when releasing as ODbL, having attribution) it's the Contributor Terms that cause the issue.
>
> The contributor terms would let us re-license their data to any arbitrary licence, including one that doesn't require attribution.

If CC-BY is indeed compatible with ODbL, which to me as a layman too 
sounds like it should be, and the Australian data is CC-BY, can't this 
whole issue be solved by altering the contributor terms slightly?

Could clause 3 rather than say "or another free and open license; which 
other free and open license is chosen by a vote of the OSMF membership 
and approved by at least a majority vote of active contributors." say 
something like "or another free and open license _with attribution_; 
..." or what ever works legally and guarantees that the any license that 
can be switched to be be compatible with CC-BY? At that point it seems 
like anyone could sign the contributor terms for CC-BY licensed data and 
we wouldn't loose or have to renegotiate the Australian data, which 
would make everyone a lot happier.

Kai