[talk-au] Active Australian OSM contributors in light of CT/license changes

[SteveC]

On Jul 8, 2011, at 2:57, Sam Couter <sam at couter.id.au> wrote:

> Steve Coast <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
>> 
>> We've gone to insanely long lengths to make that the case, including getting
>> clarifications from Ordnance Survey, Nearmap and many others. As far as I'm
>> aware there are no remaining issues as to why you can't click 'accept'.
> 
> The solution to the problem of "We chose a licence and impose terms on
> contributors that's incompatible with most sources of data" isn't to go
> to each source of data individually to try to get them to relicence.
> That's as ridiculous as choosing a GPL-incompatible software licence and
> then whining that you can't legally incorporate all those wonderful GPL
> licenced projects into yours.

I wouldn't say we chose it. We were told by legal that cc didn't work, so we spent a lot of time evolving the odbl (originally started by cc folks) and the CTs. It might look from that side of the planet that it was a hand of god type decision, but that's not the case. It's been multiple years of work around every possible solution.

Also, your frame of reference is with OSM up and running and having these kinds of relationships. When I started OSM we had no data at all and nobody wanted to give us data under any license, let alone cc. So those of us who climbed the mountain to get those people to give us data see asking people to switch (such as ordnance survey for example) as a far smaller problem.

> 
>> So while no doubt nearmap is a great resource and it's a shame they no longer
>> want to be involved, it's clear that the majority do - even large sclerotic
>> government institutions are being agile and helpful about this.
> 
> I don't think you understand the depths of recalcitrance when it comes
> to the Australian government.

I think I have an idea, I used to campaign around issues like identity cards and encryption in Britain.

> Having data released under CC licences at
> all was a huge leap, there's effectively zero chance of OSM being able
> to licence the data under ODbL. The federal and state governments just
> don't care.

Im confused that I was discussing nearmap but you jumped to the government, what am I missing?

In any case, as someone who built this project and has convinced many organizations and government agencies to open up, I urge you to have a longer timeframe outlook. These types of agencies tend to get with it in the end. Even the ordnance survey has, for example.


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> Sam Couter         |  mailto:sam at couter.id.au
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