[Talk-us] Fwd: [OSM-talk] New users have to sign up to the ODbL

Richard Weait richard at weait.com
Wed May 12 16:39:19 BST 2010


Dear All,
Here is an announcement from Steve Coast regarding another step in the
long, slow process of improving the OpenStreetMap data license.

I've paraphrased [] one portion of his email where he originally had
broken links.

The license change is a good thing.  I'm looking forward to it being
finished though, as it seems to have been going on for ever.  If you
have not been previously aware of the license change, my summary is
this.

1) ccbysa is a great license for creative works and a great concept for data
2) but Creative Commons told us that ccbysa is not intended for data
after we started using it
3) Open Knowledge Foundation created the ODbL to be both for data, and
identical to ccbysa in concept
4) volunteers from OSM have been going through the steps to transition
to a new license for some time now

Some folks don't like some aspects of the proposed license.  They are
participating in the license process and will be free to not adopt the
new license.  Some folks are tired of what seems like periodic,
tedious discussion of arcane legal gobbledygook.  They are free to
learn as much or little about the issues and participate in the degree
they choose.

If you've not heard of the license change before, I recommend this
highly simplified process.  It should take less than five minutes:

1) have a look at the ccbysa summary
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
2) have a look at the ODbL summary
http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/
3) decide that the licenses are close enough for you,
4) when the license change process asks you to accept the ODbL in a
few weeks or months, agree to do so.
5) and keep mapping.

And if you can't just accept that the licenses are close enough for
you, based on the summaries, follow the links below for more details
and discussion.  But that will extend beyond the five minute process
above.  ;-)

Best regards,
Richard


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: SteveC <steve at asklater.com>
Date: Wed, May 12, 2010 at 10:47 AM
Subject: [OSM-talk] New users have to sign up to the ODbL
To: post at opengeodata.posterous.com, openstreetmap Mailing List
<talk at openstreetmap.org>, osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org


After several thousand man years of effort by the License Working
Group and a bit of help by TomH, the new contributor terms and license
are up and to be agreed to by new users.

[Signing up for OSM now presents you with a contributor agreement,

http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms]

where essentially you are signing up to the existing CCBYSA plus the
ODbL (Open Database License).

This is one step along the long path to moving to the ODbL. For all
your fun ODbL needs, check out the wiki page:

       http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ODbL

Why is this step being taken? Basically, it bounds the problem of
moving to a license which actually protects and clarifies the uses of
OSMs data. Otherwise, the number of people who have to move grows
every day. From now on, it is a bounded problem of only the users
before today. Several further steps will need to be taken to actually
move to the ODbL.

I'd like to thank all those involved in the ODbL and the LWG for all
their hard work over the last two or so years in making this small
step happen.

And, remember, if you have any concerns or objections then they've
likely already to have been discussed at the above wiki page(s), or
you're welcome to be involved with the change process by joining the
legal mailing list and/or joining the LWG calls.
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