[talk-au] Plea to Australian decliners

[David Groom]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Weait" <richard at weait.com>
To: "Jack Burton" <jack at saosce.com.au>
Cc: "talk-au" <talk-au at openstreetmap.org>; <osm-fork at googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2012 6:32 AM
Subject: Re: [talk-au] Plea to Australian decliners


> On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 1:14 AM, Jack Burton <jack at saosce.com.au> wrote:
>> On Fri, 2012-03-30 at 15:54 +0100, Grant Slater wrote:
>>> Australian Decliners,
>>>
>>> As a mapper, contributor and member of the project's sysadmin team I
>>> kindly ask you to please reconsider your declined status. Time is
>>> about to run out.
>>
>> I am a decliner, and contributed substantial amounts of data to the map
>> (mainly in Adelaide, Melbourne & Geelong) back in the early days of OSM
>> (late 2007 to mid 2009), although I haven't made any edits in almost 2
>> years now (that's not OSM's fault -- I just haven't had the time
>> recently).
>>
>> Whilst I'd prefer that my old contributions remained in use by the
>> community, as originally intended, I still have reservations about the
>> open-ended relicensing provisions of the new CTs.
>>
>> I've just re-read the CTs, and must admit they do look less
>> objectionable to me now than when I first read them -- outside of the
>> future reclicensing provisions (clause 3), I don't have any problem with
>> them.
>>
>> Re those provisions, I still have one question, which I'm hoping someone
>> on the list can address.
>>
>> Clause 3 talks about "or such other free and open licence". I'm curious
>> as to how "free and open license" is defined in this context.
>>
>> Both the FSD and the OSD speak specifically to software, not data. In
>> the software world, there have been instances in the past of licenses
>> claiming to be "free" or "open source", without actually adhering to the
>> FSD or OSD. I suspect the same will be true in years to come with
>> respect to licensing of data.
>>
>> To agree to such a future relicensing provision, I think the parameters
>> around it would need to be fairly well defined (not so open-ended). In
>> the absence of a definition in the CTs themselves, that would mean a
>> well-recognised definition of "free and open license" (with respect to
>> data) existing somewhere else (like the FSD & OSD do in the software
>> domain).
>>
>> Can anyone point me to such a definition?
>

Richard

I am surprised that you did not mention the formal clarification that LWG 
gave on 19 July 2011 [1]

"In response to community requests, the LWG formally clarifies as follows:

The intent of the Contributor Terms as regards contributions that come from 
or are derived from third parties is:


1) To ask the contributor to be *reasonably* certain that such data can be 
distributed under the specific specific licenses, as explicitly listed in 
clause 3 of the contributor terms:  CC-BY-SA 2.0 and ODbL 1.0. We also 
stress "reasonably certain" rather than "must" because we recognise that 
most contributors are not lawyers and do not have access to one. If in 
doubt, consult the wiki or mailing lists to see what the community thinks or 
knows.



2) To give the OSM community and the OSMF the ability to remove data that 
should not be distributed as part of the OSM database.


Should the license change in the future, continued distribution of some data 
that comes from or is derived from third parties may no longer be possible. 
If this happens, it will have to be removed. This will be the responsibility 
of OSMF and the OSM community at that time. It is not necessary for current 
contributors to make guesses."


Can I check with you that the LWG still stand by that clarification, since 
that clarification severely limits the impact of CT clause 3.

Regards

David


[1] https://docs.google.com/View?id=dd9g3qjp_123cdchck62


> Sure.  As listed in the terms, the Open Knowledge Foundation has their
> Open Knowledge Definition.
>
> http://opendefinition.org/okd/
>
> Which takes an approach similar to FSD / OSD, but with attention to
> data, rather than software.
>
> http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms
>
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