[Strategic] needs of business users

[Jim Brown]

Tom Hughes wrote:
> Well obviously we want to make things as clear as possible but at the 
> end of the day we can't offer any guarantees to anybody that any 
> particular use is or is not infringing - only a court can make a binding 
> decision as to that.

As we are the entity licensing the data we can make very clear clarifying comments about what we would or would not consider infringement and where we would, or would not, take action.  So, while you are correct that only a court can make a binding decision as to if something IS an infringement.  We, as the entity offering the license, can say what is NOT considered infringement - i.e. what we would not take action on - and these use cases would never see a court.


jim

-----Original Message-----
From: strategic-bounces at openstreetmap.org [mailto:strategic-bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Tom Hughes
Sent: 23 June 2010 09:28
To: Oliver Kühn
Cc: strategic at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Strategic] needs of business users

On 22/06/10 19:17, "Oliver Kühn" wrote:

> For me there are several strategic action points to increase the acceptance of commercial users:
> (1) We need the new license as fast as possible

Well that's been true for several years and as far as I know they are 
going as fast as they can, but it's hard work bringing the community 
along with them.

> (2) We need to enhance the guidelines for the new license so that everybody will understand what is allowed and what is not

Well obviously we want to make things as clear as possible but at the 
end of the day we can't offer any guarantees to anybody that any 
particular use is or is not infringing - only a court can make a binding 
decision as to that.

> (3) We need to find someone who can provide (paid) professional legal support that results in "waterproof" statements concerning the license. I think it would be sufficient to cooperate with two or three international law firms that we can refer to.

I'm not quite sure exactly what model you're envisaging here, but I can 
see it might be tricky. Presumably you're just talking about us 
referring people to firms for advice but why should we endorse 
particular firms.

There would be a significant risk of a conflict of interest arising - 
indeed it might be impossible for a law firm to get involved in such a 
scheme precisely because of conflict of interest issues.

Equally, no lawyer can ever provide a "waterproof" statement. Even a 
formal opinion from a lawyer is only that, an opinion as to how a court 
would be most likely to view something.

Most of our end users are likely to be smaller companies who aren't 
going to be able to afford a big international firm anyway and are 
likely to use a smaller local firm that will be cheaper. Bigger 
companies will have existing in house or external counsel to go to for 
advice already.

> (4) We need to think about the opportunity to create detailed maps of non-public areas that do not fall into the share-alike category by either (a) the opportunity to exclude limited areas from the share-alike license or (b) establish a solution where users can derive a an image layer for selected areas by using OSM editing tools.

Why do we need to do this? I can understand that some people might want 
to but that doesn't mean we should feel obliged to support them.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://compton.nu/

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