[Osmf-talk] Community Guidelines, ODbL and CT

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

As most of you are likely aware, the foundation has crafted community
guidelines to "explain" how the OSMF wants the ODbL to be read. In many
cases they do effectively limit the share alike provisions the ODbL does
foresee, e.g. regional cuts or horizontal layers.

The former guideline states that share alike does not kick in if you use
OSM data in one part of your map and other data in other parts.
http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Community_Guidelines/Regional_Cuts_-_Guideline

The horizontal layer guideline states that you don't have to share other
data if you mix it with OSM data but don't take any of the "Feature Types"
from OSM that you use from other data providers.
http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Community_Guidelines/Horizontal_Map_Layers_-_Guideline

This second guideline seems to weaken the provisions of the ODbL rather
than being just an explanation how to interpret it. Besides some technical
problems ("Feature Type" is not a term defined in the ODbL, I am not sure
whether it is an established legal term, but I guess it is not), I do not
see how this kind of license limitation is covered by the Contributor
Terms, which do state:

"3. OSMF agrees that it may only use or sub-license Your Contents as part
of a database and only under the terms of one or more of the following
licences: ODbL 1.0 for the database and DbCL 1.0 for the individual
contents of the database; CC-BY-SA 2.0; or such other free and open licence
(for example, http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/) as may from time to time
be chosen by a vote of the OSMF membership and approved by at least a 2/3
majority vote of active contributors."

IMHO we need to vote on these amendments to the ODbL to make them become
effective, the OSMF does not have a mandate to change the licensing
provisions without asking the active contributors.

Cheers,
Martin
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