[Osmf-talk] Contributor Agreement is Dual Licensing

80n 80n80n at gmail.com
Sun Dec 13 14:58:39 UTC 2009


On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 2:14 PM, Matt Amos <matt at asklater.com> wrote:

> 80n wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 10:01 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org
> > <mailto:frederik at remote.org>> wrote:
> >
> >     Hi,
> >
> >     Gervase Markham wrote:
> >      > On 12/12/09 15:16, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> >      >> The main reason, I think, is that what you (the individual
> >     contributor)
> >      >> have is not necessarily a database (think of someone just making
> >     a few
> >      >> fixes to road names or so).
> >      >
> >      > That may be true. But that doesn't require the OSMF to have
> special
> >      > rights. Why not write the licence so whatever rights downstream
> users
> >      > need are granted to them directly by the original submitter of
> >     the data?
> >      > There should be no need for the involvement of a third party.
> >
> >     ODbL is a license that can be used for people who already have a
> >     database that they want to license.
> >
> >     That OSM is a project where a database comes into existence by having
> >     lots of people contribute to a common pool is outside the scope of
> ODbL.
> >
> >     Making a license that covers the crowd-sourced creation *and* the
> >     downstream licensing of a database would surely be possible but that
> >     would be an entirely different beast I believe, and also one that
> would
> >     in all likelyhood be a special OSM license used by nobody else than
> OSM.
> >
> >
> > Isn't that what ODbL plus Contributor Terms is?  Something different
> > from ODbL, incompatible with other ODbL data and unique to OSM.
>
> incompatible on import, compatible on export. if you have some ODbL data
> then there's nothing in the contributor terms or ODbL which would
> prevent you from combining the two and redistributing it. but it
> wouldn't be possible to add it to OSM.
>
> > It seems to me that the Contributor Terms are the source of many of the
> > problems identified with the proposed license scheme.  They hinder the
> > ability for other ODbL datasets to be added to OSM, they prevent
> > attribution-only datasets from being added to OSM.
>
> they prevent other ODbL datasets from being added to OSM. i, personally,
> don't think this is a bad thing. instead of hunting for datasets to
> import, maybe it would be better to go out mapping?
>
> > Additionally, they load a lot of responsibility onto OSMF and take away
> > the ability for contributors to protect their own data.
>
> this is incorrect. all contributors still retain their rights to their
> data, these aren't taken by OSMF and contributors still have full
> ability to protect their data.
>
> This is incorrect.  I can take steps to sue someone for infringing my
data.  I can't do anything about it if someone infringes the data I
contribute to OSM.  I'm reliant on OSMF to do this for me.  If the OSMF
becomes ineffectual then there's nothing I can do about it, I have no rights
to protect the contributions given to OSM.

What's your plan for protecting the data that contributors give to you?



> > OSMF becomes a single point of failure.  This is not a good thing.
>
> according to our own counsel, OSMF already was a de-facto single point
> of failure as the licensor. in that regard, very little is changing.
>
> cheers,
>
> matt
>
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